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Australian Spam Bill Not So Good After All?
crazney writes "Electronic Frontiers Australia has criticized the anti-spam bill proposed by the Australian government. You can read their full analysis here"
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So Alston is still the worlds biggest luddite even though he's gone... can we see the new minister change this bill for good or will he usurp Alston's title?
Warning: Excessive usage of stupidity may be harmful to your health
the bill had the Chinese shaking in their boots.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Crikey, there's a huuuuuge spelling mistake lying in the article text *just above me*. This one's a real beaut, too mate! It would be sick if you just fixed that up there...
</crocodile-hunter>
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
* Stop the Telstra Bulldozer in it's tracks -- support broadband. Canada proves it's possible in a big country * Sensible censorship * Sensible copyright * Serious commitment to anti-spam * Keep investing and committing to open source Alston's policies have left Australia as an international IT joke. So much local telent, and so many opportunities in the Asian and global markets have gone to waste. More importantly, every Australian business and consumer has suffered from the 1950s attitudes of the present Aussie govt. Step into the 80s guys, the economy is not all agriculture and textiles!
The linux hacker
Recently it has seemed that if anything was said to be anti-spam it was deemed to be good - no further scrutiny was required.
These laws were a case in point, but any comments here or elsewhere that questioned the new laws were howled down in the shared "spam-is-evil" sentiment. Spam is a pain and is hard to defend - but defeating spam should be a case of the right tool for the job. The right tool is rarely legislation - yet it is the first we seem to reach for.
I'm glad that there is some well thought out legitimate questioning of these knee-jerk reaction laws.
none required.
Criticise is how WE spell it.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=criticise &db=*
Yeah but mod who moded you deserves +1, Funny.
aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi
aussie oi aussie oi
aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi
...I think you'll find in English (you know, the language spoken in England) that it is spelt criticised.
I don't know what weird dialect you're talking about.
Indeed , and its the correct spelling, cos its in english as oposed to american ;)
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
It's not just about australia its about your rights online. Since spam infringes on everyones privacy and its not just restricted to Australia this is relevant news for everyone. Furthermore, this spam bill, good or bad can be adopted/improved on by other nations wanting to fight spam.
You mean training kangaroos to box the crap out of spammers is not a good idea !!!
Whats that Skippy ? You threw another spammer down the mine shaft. Good roo.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Spam laws are kind of like the US gun control laws. They're all fine and dandy, but until the existing laws are enforced, they really mean nothing. And the greater restrictions probably just annoy law-abiding citizens.
(Now, I'm all in favor of gun control. Just not more legislation until the ATF actually does something.)
Make that a Care Bear. GAWD, rainbow bear is so fucking fine.
Funny thing is, most American spellings are the older ones. There was a discussion about that not too long ago.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Oh, wait. I just sent some emails to the people who own:
mail006.syd.optusnet.com.au
mta05.mail.mel
mta04.mail.mel.aone.net.au
And told them to stop the spamming.Yeah, I'm getting these "Microsoft Net Update" mail messages at a rate of about 6 an hour. "Please install this latest update, rejwk.bat". Please wash my balls.
I'm so freaking frustrated, though. I don't know how to filter them, cause they're comming from lots of different (some non-open relay) mail servers, and the messages are innocent enough as to not be words I'd want to filter out of my incomming mail. Plus, all the file attachments and email addresses and attachments are all randomly generated characters.
FUCKING SPAM make the internet unusable! GOD DAMNIT. They took something that was beautiful in it's simplicity, and FUCKING RUINED IT.
GOD, I must be tired to rant, but it pisses me off. Viruses! Spam! Worms! Denial of service! Get sued by the FBI, CIA, RIAA, SCO, FreeMasons! Fuck, it's a wonder anyone's still online.
~Will
sig?
And you supposedly had sex? Yeah, right. Whatever.
But since this is an Australia-centric article, I'd just like to thank Australia for producing such a hottie as Kylie Minoque.
It filters out these stuff quite reliably (and with very low false-positive rates) after training it with 20 or so legit mails. For safety just mark them as spam and not really delete them. It won't reduce bandwidth waste or prevent filling up the ISP's mailbox though.
"to try to outlaw a common weed." Yep they already that here in the USA. Now whe have the DEA. They convinced a bunch of other countries to do it too so they can have represive laws too. We don't need drug laws and we don't need gun laws we Do need anti spam laws and honest government to enforce them. That how ever would require honest politicians which I don't think exist.
This is another one of those laws that may have been made with good intentions in mind, but will either not work or actually unintentionally harm those who aren't the real culprits. The problem with this law, much like the DMCA, is that the computer world is changing rapidly, and it is often hard to draw lines as to what is or isn't spamming. Instead you end up with huge loopholes for the real spammers and lots of red tape and problems for those who aren't. Laws regarding online crime or problems need to be updated at least a few times a year, if not monthly. However, the speed at which governments are willing to change laws is far too slow to do this.
I thought Alston got shuffled OUT in the recent
[pre-election] gov't shake-up
Even the "Children Overboard" (ie refugee kids
in desert detention-centres) immigration minister
- Ruduk? - got replaced... by Vanstone.
It's the old shell-game...
While it seems that the US government, for example, has and is actually doing the right thing with the national do-not-call list, perhaps that is the exception.
We are asking our governments to step up to do the right thing and protect us from this nonsense, but what they seem unable to restrain themselves from doing is to get their hands on all of it and regulate it.
We aren't asking for a whole system of regulation, we are just asking for protection.
The problem though, is that there are a lot of other parties who see this whole mess from other (possibly commercial) perspectives, and they want protection too, or whatever you would call doing services to their private interests and agendas.
For example, if we call in the government to help us, are they also going to decide that it is ok for political and non-profit groups to spam each of my email addresses X number of times per year or per month? Is government going to decide that any business can spam me once a year or until I renew my request with them to not be spammed?
Is the Bush re-election campaign going to be able to spam me once a month asking for donations?
Should we be worried that regulation will bring some relief, but with it the legitimization of unsolicited email conforming to the new regulations as an acceptable component of an advertising model for mainstream products and services, especially with telemarketing being clamped down on perhaps more now than in the past?
While I do believe that it is appropriate for us to act through our government to regulate this mess for the benefit of the majority (there is no right or legitimate expectation of private persons to force a communication with another person against his or her will), and ideally they would, I do not have faith in our elected representatives to do the right thing.
I think that is very sad. It seems that realistically our best hope for just and progressive government right now is to elect those who will screw us over least badly with the representative power we give them.
section {.rant}
I don't want to elect agendas or philosophers or idealists. I want to elect, surprisingly representatives, persons who I can in good faith entrust to act as an extension of my person - an extension of my own moral agency, an entity whose actions, good or bad, I am directly responsible for in so far as I am representated by a maximally auditable, responsive, and transparent manner, not used.
Just get it done, damnit.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Whine, whine, whine you liberal bitch.
You'd rather have this country run over by these illiterate piss-poor mud-people? Spreading diseases, begging on the streets and dealing/using dope? Is that what you want?
It's not like our government has actually done anything decent in IT/Telecommunications in the last 20 years, if it's done anything, its stifled development through self-regulation of companies like Tel$tra (who deserve the cliched $/S replacement far more than MS.)
-Gwala
#!/bin/csh cat $0
Yes.
You really want to run down our society?
Is that just the Swen worm, by any chance? It's all over the place, and sends mail claiming to be from MS Technical Support.
If it is, it's not quite the same as spam - the people sending it to you don't even know they're doing it, so anti-spamming laws aren't going to make them stop. I share your anger at what spam has done to email, but I think it is important to understand it and differentiate it from other annoyances such as worms and viruses if we are to deal with the situation.
Legislation seems unlikely to be a complete solution to spam, because it only takes one country without the same laws (or one failing to enforce laws) for the problem to continue. It's going to take technical solutions (e.g. filtering) and social solutions (e.g. better educated users) as well to really solve the problem.
SHUT up you dumb loser, what the fuck do you do for the country anyway.
Yes eye candy is good, but I would like to take the opportunity to thank the UK for adopting Kylie and saving Australia the musical torture.
And another thing. If I were an Australian sportsperson, I would be very embarrased if some group of idiots up in the stands started chanting that out!
This thread is exactly why our civilization is doomed.
Weeeeeeell, no actually.
It isn't a troll.
While not entirely serious (duh!) this is a reasonable facsimile of the sort of spam you can expect to get under laws of this kind. This is one of the reasons it's a bad law. It won't stop spam, just create more "charities," as well as making existing charities adopt some rather strange bed fellows.
The same goes for a do not call lists that exempt charities. Instead of getting calls from MCI you'll start getting calls from United Way selling cheap long distance phone service, "for the children."
And no way under law to stop them.
You don't have to believe me. Just pass these laws and wait a year or so. You'll see. It's the way businesses work; and never forget that charities are businesses.
They sure as hell never do.
KFG
Why not?
Run it down. Australians are just english prisoners anyway.
It might be the Swen worm, I haven't looked at that one.
I get lots of other spam there, too. There's not too much I can do about it (see other posts in this thread by me). But, yeah, I know that worms aren't the same as spam.
All of these either look like they're from Microsoft Tech Support or they're trying to tell me that a mail has bounced, convieniently it was the attachment.
I wish slashdot still used timestamps for posts, so you could see, but I've had 7 of that worm come in since I posted that post.
The thing about legislation: People claim that it's the first thing we reach for, when we know that laws have a way of turning bad on us. To that I say "try administering a spam-filtered mail server for an ISP". It's a constant fight between spam and blocking mail that users want. And, honestly, if you (the anonymous "you people", not parent poster) feel that legislation is a last resort, I feel equally that, basically, I'm out of ideas. I've tried everything. It's time to board talyn and blow up the command carrier; we can't run from Scorpius anymore.
Frustrated, Annoyed, and generally having given up,
~Will
sig?
I've been thinking, and I've come to the realization that America really started fucking up big time after WWII. It went down hill. Up until then, we didn't fuck around on the world stage. We were too busy killing indians and building railroads and such. Then all of a sudden, we are in the lead for the technological revolution, and we get a little extra ego. We helped win a war that we didn't even want to be in to begin with, saved the world.
Why couldn't it have stoped there?
No, we thought we were the world's policemen. Started sticking our noses where it really didn't belong. We became arrogant. Now we've pissed off enough people in the world and they are starting to fight back.
Can you blame them?
C'mon, you are going to get a little pissy if your significant other's mom/dad tells you to do something that you don't want to do.
Oh well, fuck it. I'm going to leave eventualy anyway. Either Canada or England, unless I can improve my French dramaticaly. All I can say now is Je suis poisione.
here's an idea, keep the hackers busy and the spammers worried www.listofspammerstohack.com.au
I'll subscribe
The latest Spamassassin catches them all just fine for me - some of them score high enough even without my bayes training. Actually, after upgrading to 2.6, the only spam I see in my inbox is the type with a single image and a buch of random dictionary words, and even those are starting to get caught by my bayes filters (random dictionary words means that there are a lot of words that don't show up in my normal messages).
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
You are right. There is always a way around things and spammers will keep on doing what they do. Im afraid that spam is here to stay unfortunatly..
So much local telent...
What about local telnet? Wouldn't ssh be a better choice?
Give spammers THE BOOT!
Except of course that Alston is an EX-Minister since the Government reshuffle.
The liver is evil and must be punished.
Oh, I wouldn't mind voting for the odd agenda, philosophy or ideal. I would simply like those agendas, philophies and ideals to have vague coorespondence with my own.
In nearly thirty years of voting I've never seen anyone on any ballot that I have felt comfortable voting for, let alone feel they were "my" representative.
I like representative government. I like the fact that politicians are charged with equal representation of all the people in their political jurisdiction, not just me. It keeps me from running roughshod over them, and should keep them from running roughshod over me.
But then I'm a philosopher and idealist I guess.
Politicians aren't, no matter what they say. In their own minds they are only winners or losers and everything they do is explained by this.
Find me a man today who will honestly say, "I'd rather be right than President" and I might be inclined to feel comfortable voting for him, even if I was a mite uncomfortable with his "agenda."
At least I'd know where he stood as a man.
KFG
People escaping the likes of the taliban and Saddam Husseins Regime were locked up behind barbed wire fences in the middle of the desert for years on end.
Pre-teen girls and their mothers no less.
And you're worried about spam laws?
score MICROSOFT_EXECUTABLE 5
in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
That way everything with an executable will be set as spam. You can then use sieve or other mail scripting language to filter / discard the messages as apropriate.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Lay down the crackpipe, dude.
Sorry, you have AIDS. And you fuck children.
How in the name of high holy FUCK is this a troll?
LOL you yanks are still shitty at us for beating your asses in the pool at the sydney olympics?
Nobody will take action against a spammer under that threat.
I respect your opinion, however at the end of the day that's all it is; an opinion. Your representatives also represent [x] amount of people who also have opinions; some of them spammers. I AM IN NO WAY sticking up for spammers, however restrict the rights of one and you end up restricting the rights of many. A downfall, to be sure, however I'd rather be scrutinized by my peers than be prosecuted by the government.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
So, what you're saying is if Spam dissapeared, you'd be out of a job? Remember kids, Spam is only bad if you're not making money off it.
Legislation is not the answer. There are too many juristictions in which you cannot enforce *your* law. Even if the UN stepped in - who will prosecute? The answer is in the technology. Where is SMTP version 2 (or whatever) that fixes this shit? Let's rollout IP6 and change the protocols so typing in any old crap into an MTA makes it work ! Sure spammers will still spam, but they could no longer lie about who they are or where they are sending mail from. Don't want it - block it. Also - all you ISP's out there that host open relays for networks other than your own - you suck!
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
You can't simultaneously have laws against spam and support legally unfettered email, since the latter implies that spam is OK. It's just like free speech; you can't be for free speech "except" the free speech of groups you don't like.
You have to fight spam by going after what it mostly is: criminal fraud, and the only effective legislation against spam will be increasing the criminal penalties for mail/wire fraud that already exist, perhaps by including any financial participation (vendor/seller/spammer) in a spam operation as a RICO charge, coupled with vigorous federal investigation and prosecution.
But, the US federal government is more interested in pursuing a senseless pattern of law enforcement like "Operation Headhunter" and locking up guys like Tommy Chong for putting his name on a bong.
Plus, I think much of the Republican party is made up of self-styled "entrepeneurs" who think that lying, cheating and stealing are all just "aggressive sales techniques", so its unlikely we'll get much action out of them.
Until then, just expect the usual people who can't think three feet past their nose to expect that you can limit spam but still have free email.
Hahaha! You can say that again. Thankfully she's mostly there and not here.
Sensible Censorship
Well there's an oxymoron.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Americans (no offence have a tipical stero-type against Austarilans, im one, many of you base all your facts of Australia on the Movie Crocodile Dundee hardly any Australian likes it and if you were to realise over 90% of Australians Population lives in Cities. Take Sydney for example but it could be any city: It has 5 million people and many of them are in IT. Although Agurculture plays a part in australia the population in the Out-back as you might call it is decreasing dayliy. And we arnt stupid in they ways of computing either, although our IT ministers are pretty shite, we use fiber-optic cable for schools we have frequent lan parties and are testing grounds for many new product from American compaines eg Microsoft. And finally to top it all of we do not have pet kangaroos that would be like seeing a polar bear in Mexico City, and many of us have never seen a crocodile in our lives and we eat McDonalds.
its discussions like this that make me proud to be australian :/
There are assholes in the world. They are few, but they cause trouble out of all proportion to their numbers. Prepare for the assholes while you enjoy the good people. Worth remembering in trying times.
Here are some easy solutions to their sorry efforts.
1. Spam: don't post your e-mail address in machine readable format. Pretty much handles it. If people whine about the re-typing, ask 'em if they'd rather be getting e-mail for "Hot Gay Webcam!!!" or "I love you!".
2. Worms/viri: Use non-standard hardware. The Wintel setup is the main target, so don't be a target.
There's so much semi-obsolete workstation hardware out there for the asking, it staggers the imagination. Stuff that was $30,000 five years ago is under $500 now. Check out Alpha, SGI, Sun boxes. Big crunch for small bucks, and most run Linux. Some assembly required.
Eg. SGI Octanes are cheap, they SMOKE and they run all manner of Gnu freeware on Irix 6.5. Plus they have the best video I've ever seen. DEC Alphas run Linux natively, and they are also cheap.
3. Firewall! Even if you are on a corporate intranet, firewall your shit. There's no reason not to when a P-150 can run a bulletproof and FREE firewall. You can even encrypt your in-office traffic and the stuff on your hard drives.
4. Lawsuits: Not to say that RIAA and etc. are good guys, but if you stay off the download circuit they've got nothing. We know where the sharks are, don't swim there. Pretty simple. Trade your music on CDs with friends. Snail mail has very high bandwidth, y'know.
5. Big Brother really isn't going to fix this: There's no way in hell a bunch of power-seeking gubmint nitwits are going to keep up with the curve here. Even if they cared they aren't smart enough, and they really don't care.
Anything they enact is guaranteed to fuck over regular users while leaving spammers in business. Somebody up the thread used gun control as an example, and it is an apt one. It is how government weenies think. Do you really want to be buying a computer licence next year, have some clerk at the Ministry of Computer Sanitation reading your e-mail and still be getting spam? Because that's the way they will do it and that's what will happen.
Centralized command and control doesn't work on a distributed system, only distributed self defence works. Harden your own gear and give the black hats a big 'ol raspberry!
Or you can wait for Big Brother to make it all better. "You haf ze papieren fur zis laptop, mein herr?"
Is the Bush re-election campaign going to be able to spam me once a month asking for donations?
It's the Dean compaign that was accused of spamming, IIRC.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
I was refering to the parent post in my previous post, that would be the grandparent of this one. Here is the URL for said post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=81089&cid=7135 915
I apologize for any confusion and will make it a point to be more clear in the future.
No, what I am saying is that less spam would make my job easier and allow me to focus on other things that need attention.
sig?
In theory, a good idea.
I practice, mail.netmar.com handles 300,000 pieces of mail a day for over 1000 customers. Many of whom want to get attachments and don't really know much about spam. Many of whom are not technically literate, or less so than you and I.
I'll run it by the boss, though. It's getting really annoying.
~Will
sig?
Comments on the subject last time stated that the bill was poo poo, who wasn't listening??? Alston is still a moron, don't degrade us luddites by associating him with us! Luddites choose to bag/reform technology, Alston simply don't understand what the technology does.
Telecommunications is Oz is stiffled by low population and distance, not Telstra, etc. 90%+ can have broardband, only 5% want it.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Something like spam needs either a global response, or a response from the country where the internet regulating bodies live, which in most cases is the USA. The USA effectively owns the internet, the rest of us have to pay data charges both ways to the USA. Any attempt at removing spam will need the co-operation of the USA.
However, we can't really trust a government to give us what we want in this area, it's too technical for the sixty year old english literature or accountancy graduates that head government departments - it's up to the SMTP experts to develop something, get it deployed and have it running for a couple of years before it will come to the notice of governments.
The messages are legal from government bodies, and the Nigerian spam pretends to be from a government body. The burden of proof would be on the reciepient to show that it is not really a message from a current or ex government minister of Nigeria/Liberia/South Africa/Insert name here. This law is useless in this situation, and we already have laws for fraud.
Told ya so! I admit that I didn't see those other loopholes coming, but any spam bill that a marketing group likes always (1) legitimize a class of spam, and/or (2) legitimize a group of spammers.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Hahaha, the Government can seize a person's computers for RECEIVING spam. What a great country I live in....
...isn't exactly a haven of correct spelling.
The Australian federal government is an ultra-conservative right wing arm of a conservative coalition of right wing parties.
Its primary interest is in supporting big business. This is demonstrated by every piece of legislation it has ever proposed.
This proposed anti-spam legislation is exactly the same. It allows for misuse by anybody at all, makes no provisions whatsoever for the actual traffic (apparently assuming that all spam includes working a reply-to) and makes it look good to big business, who it considers to be the only disadvantaged party due to the "loss of productivity" which results from spam to work addresses.
Alston gave us a digital TV system which nobody can use but perfectly protects the interests of existing big media outlets (Fox and PBL). He gave us forced membership of the Telecoms Industry Assoc for ISPs, which bans them from making complaints about other ISPs or Telcos to the Industry Ombudsman, and is following with an entirely foreseeable effort to appear to be getting rid of spam.
Let's not forget, this is a federal government who actually sent junk-mail to every postal address in the country using to advertise itself. Using tax funds, of course.
Yes, but a lot of them are the result of a conscious effort to 'improve' the dictionary by American linguists, too. Personally I like the character that (UK) English spellings lend to the language.
Still, I enjoy the arrogance of Americans who assert that '-ise' is incorrect. I sometimes think such people might actually believe that English originated in America or something.
Read Pynchon.
Off-topic I realise, but foreigners should be aware that Australia has a policy of mandatory detention for refugees who come here to seek freedom from persecution. This is part of a conservative policy known as 'deterrence.' Effectively we take the neediest and most downtrodden people on earth, put them in a paddock in the desert behind razor wire, and deny them access to basic legal and human rights that even serial killers receive in Australia. Furthermore it is no coincidence that these people who are demonised are universally non-white, whilst thousands of white illegal immigrants from the US, UK and New Zealand swarm around our country using up welfare and not getting caught.
If you are a non-Australian and you care about human rights, please do not buy Australian products, do not visit Australia, do write to your own government and ask them to pressure Australia about this issue, and do write to the Australian government to explain to them that you don't want to visit Australia as a result of this policy.
Read Pynchon.
That's not spam, dude, it's a virus/worm. Quite different things.
And on the subject of eating at McDonalds, a weapons of mass obesity filter.
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
Went to read it but its too long. Can anyone summerises. Its monday and can't be bothered.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
*knock knock* is this thing on?
asliuef haosef aosefhd
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia (CAUBE.AU), has reviewed the criticisms of EFA, and found that this label is entirely unjustified. In particular:
While there is room for improvement, the Bill sets the right base standard - opt-in. It provides a framework in which almost all of the concerns that EFA has with the fringe areas can be fine-tuned by executive regulation. It is wrong to claim that the Bill is "not anti-spam". The Bill does ban spam. Not all spam, but the largest categories of spam. Its impact on non-bulk commercial email is minimal, and adequate measures have been included to deal with unforeseen consequences.
Although CAUBE.AU does not agree with all of the policy decisions made in drafting Spam Bill 2003, its variances are not such as to warrant the conclusion that it should not be supported.
Accordingly, CAUBE.AU continues to support the Spam Bill 2003 in its present form.
A full reply is available at http://www.caube.org.au/efa-reply.htm.