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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.
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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.
...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.
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.)
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?
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.
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
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
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
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.
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".