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First Lawsuits Filed under Missouri's No-Spam Law
darksoulz writes "The St. Louis Business Journal is reporting that Jay Nixon, Missouri's attorney general, has filed the first lawsuits under the new no-spam law against two Florida spammers. The law doesn't totally prohibit spam, it just requires that the subject line be tagged to let consumers know that it is an advertisement. One of the lawsuit recipients even managed to spam an address maintained by the attorney general's office."
Sorry, interstate commerce is not controlled by the states. The law cannot and does not apply to spammers who work out of the jurisdiction of Missouri.
For one or two emails, yes. Your answer is only referring to your personal experience with spam as a single email user. Now look at the bigger picture. You have never run an ISP though have you? Multipy the 'negligble cost' by tens of thousands of emails and it certainly DOES add up, no matter HOW little you are paying for bandwidth.
Consider that spammers may send your domain even millions of random emails e.g. aaa@yourdomain, aab@yourdomain etc. just to see which ones get through (i.e. don't bounce). Cost to them? Nothing. Cost to you? Plenty.
Even if you think this doesn't effect you, what happens when your ISP gets a major bandwidth bill? You end up paying for it.
The fact is, you should not have to pay for receiving someone's advertising yet you are, directly or not, and as such are being abused by the spammers whose activities require stronger legislation than this!
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I had a conversation today about legislative requirements to mark spam as an advertisement. Invariably the subject arose concerning utilization of compromised computers making enforcement of any anti-spam law rather difficult.
I have a thought about that... We are permitted to own vehicles which participate on various public transportation infrastructure facilities such as state roads, the interstate system, etc. We are required to ensure the road-worthiness of the vehicle we own. We are required (more or less in differing states) to ensure our vehicle meets certain emission control requirements as well. Why then is it a leap to imagine that we must ensure (to the best of our ability) that our computers are kept up to date to prevent them from becoming criminal tools. I understand that we can't all be liable for the repercussion of the latest hack. I even understand that some people aren't as tech savvy as others just like I understand I am not a mechanic but it is my responsibility to ensure the tires on my car are securely fastened before using it to participate on a public roadway. If I don't know how to tighten lug nuts there are mechanics who can help me ensure my vehicle is safe. There are technical types who can help the "computer clueless" batten down the hatches a bit.
For example, I think if there is currently a computer out there that is STILL a nimda or code-red shit pump the owner of the computer should share some level of negligent liability, criminal or civil. If you are going to connect your computer to the internet then you need to take some responsibility for that action. For too long we just let anyone connect to the net any way they like. Let's tighten up the ship a bit...
Not always. Sometimes it is just a way of creating lists of valid email addresses that they can sell on to other spammers.
I expect a lot of these penis enlargement things do not even exist. It is just used to check which mails bounce and which are actually read. Using an embeded image with a special URL.
They can make more money selling your email address to someone else than they can from selling you a product or service.
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