Slashdot Mirror
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"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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?
I'll accept your analogy, for the sake of argument, and run with it.
The problem with enforcing gun control laws is similar to the problem with enforcing spam laws.
Anyone can make crude offensive firearms quickly and cheaply in their own basement.
Anyone can make crude and offensive spam quickly and cheaply in their own basement.
The advantage the spammers have over the gun makers is that the spammer can make spam in somebody else's basement will still sitting snuggly in their own.
To enforce a law first you have to be able identify violators. Then you have to be able to arrest them, inside your own jurisdiction.
The big spammers protect themselves and are immune from any law. Thus antispam laws are only going to end up getting used against minor players, kids sending out "flyers" for their ball game and such. A granny thinking she can make a few extra bucks by peddling her hand crocheted doilies with some email.
They'll throw the book at them too.
Tackling the spam problem by making laws is just as silly as it would be to try to outlaw a common weed.
The problem is inherent in the system. Fix the system, no more problem.
KFG
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
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.
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
How, exactly? Saying that it's OK for people to email each other has nothing to do with saying that it's not OK to shift the cost of your advertising to recipients who don't want it.
HL Mencken said that there's simple, obvious answer to every problem, and that answer is wrong. The definition of what is spam is the key to any "anti-spam" legislation. If I see a news posting where you wish you had some hard to find widget and I happen to have one and email you that I want to sell it, am I spamming you? On one hand yes, because it's an unsolicited commercial message. One the other hand no, because there was an inferred request for solicitation.
"Solicitation", "desire for solicitation", and so on all have very murky and pliable definitions. The the law of unintended consequences guarantees that there will be other, further limitations on who can run an email server, who can send email, a demand for authenticity in email (ie, no nicknames or aliases, only real, legal names), and on and on.
This is what led to my methaphor about free speech. I'm not comparing free speech to spam at all. The idea is that you can't support free speech for everyone but the people you don't want to hear from. That's not free speech, it's restricted speech that just happens not to limit your particular speech, until someone applies those restrictions to your speech.
Which is the lesson we should all remember about restricting spam and the fairly slippery definition spam will have in the hands of legislators, spammers, marketers, John Aschcroft, etc. Just because *your* flavor of spam is blocked, doesn't mean there won't be other unintended email restrictions down the line. You can't have "free email" if you're willing to support "restricted email".