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Senate Passes Anti-Spam Bill
Zendar writes "Yahoo! is reporting that the 'U.S. Senate passed the first national anti-spam bill on Wednesday, giving momentum to an issue that has riled consumers almost as much as dinnertime phone calls.' However, the bill, referred to as the 'Can Spam' bill, is unlikely to pass the House and be signed by the President. Senator John McCain sums it up: 'The odds of defeating spam by legislation alone is extremely low, but that does not mean we should stand idly by and do nothing about it.' CNN also has the story."
It doesn't allow for mobs to tear the spammers limb from limb, lynching, or any other fun group activities.
(Grim) Humor aside, the only thing that I can see this doing is forcing spammers to move off shore, open shell companies in spam havens, and generally make things harder to do.
Hate to say it, but I think it is time to move beyond email.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
The name of the bill is a little bit misleading. When I first read it, I read it as "[you] can spam" as opposed to "can (get rid of) spam".
It's a shame that they think it won't go anywhere, though...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
when Congress used to work on laws that affected the Nation? These days, they would rather pass stupid (and worthless) laws about things that have no effect on the Nation (as a whole) instead of going after the real problems.
As well, add another (potential) law that will be ignored wholesale by the populace.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
When you start getting sued for sending your resume to 100 different companies, ask yourself, was it worth it?
Until some local yocal judge from Oklahoma decides that the bill is unconstitutional, just like the do-not-call list.
.01 spams per capita? Sounds democratic enough. And, hey!, we'd expand to 60 states in no time! If expansion is good for the NFL, it is good enough for the U.S. of A!
And, of course, I must unoriginally question just how they plan to enforce this? Perhaps we should just invade any country that originates more than
The odds of ending In Soviet Russia Posts by moderation alone is extremely low, but that does not mean we should stand idly by and do nothing about it.
They also voted themsleves a new pay raise for the great and wonderous work they are doing in passing unenforceable laws. Aren't you just happy that while we're all getting canned and being forced to work at MickeyD's to put ramen noodle soup on your table, these asshats are giving themsleves raises. The argue its about increase of livimng since the average workers salary went up. I got news for you do, if your salary percent went up its cause either the number of lower salary people out of work is increasing hence giving a better percentage. If your personal alary went up, its becuase you actually did do a good job and got a raise. Note: DID A GOOD JOB. Last time i looked the economy was still in flush mode. So just remmeber that when you look at this law. This law, the time they wasted on it, and others like it is where your tax dollars are going. Gives you a whole a whole new perpective on this law now...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
'The odds of defeating spam by legislation alone is extremely low, but that does not mean we should stand idly by and do nothing about it.'
Ummmm, yes, that's exactly what it means.
Spam is a social, and perhaps technological, issue. Please stop wasting my tax dollars and your time on promoting legislation which you yourself admit is pointless and go handle some issues for which legislation is the actual remedy.
If you really need some useful "makework" and a politically advantageous cause how about going through the books and finding existing law that shouldn't be there and rescinding it?
Or would that be too sensical for a congressman to handle?
KFG
In this, it is similar to the problem of burglary -- both better locks and better law enforcement have their place.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Much more info about the bill:
Proud patriot and republican voter.
"...but we'll pacify the ignorant public with the appearance of trying to combat spam. That will get us elected to another term, at least!"
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Conisdering this quote came from John McCain, I'd translate it as, "Look, legislation isn't a 100% cure, but we can at least do something that's within our power under the Constitution to minimize the onslaught of spam."
I've thought of generating a bunch of legal addresses and putting them on a CD-ROM, to show to my congresswoman with the message 'Here are 60 million of my legal e-mail addresses. This disk is full. How many more should I make?'
I'm glad that this bill is unlikely to pass, though it makes up something like 70% of my mail. We need opt-in legislation, and we need it with teeth. Large and increasing fines, individual grounds to sue, and possibly even the death penalty after some number of convictions; maybe 10?
--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
A legal front that ought to be opened is the application of existing computer-crime laws to certain spamming techniques. The deployment of trojans to create open relays and even outright spamboxes is an obvious example.
Additionally, the use of forged headers, munged words, etc to evade spam filters is arguably a form of cracking in and of itself -- what is it, if not a deliberate attempt to use someone else's computer without the owner's permission, and indeed against the owner's express prohibition?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Hell, the RIAA got such an absure bill introduced. Just imagine if anti-spammers had that kind of back-door infuence on the congressional process.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Lets see if this deters the the penile or boob enlargement pill spams that I get everyday on my cellphone..
:
Personally, I like to see that the government is doing something.
On my desktop
Spam has become a work of art these days that even my bayesian filters have a hard time keeping up.
1) First I used email address to block spam.. they came at me with different email addresses.
2) Then I marked emails with certain words as spam. They changed that too. Started spelling viagra "vi-agra". Lost again.
3) Installed spammunition and stopped spam based on context. They started to remove all words from spam and started adding jpegs with the ads.
Even the jpeg names are different each time.. grrrr..
All these spam emails get sent, about 30 emails get sent over weekend.
Feels like the battle at Helms deep !
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
For those of you interested, the bill is S.877
CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Email) opposes this bill.
The bill isn't "Can Spam" in terms of canning spam. It's "Can Spam" in terms of "You Can Spam. Sure. Go ahead." It's opt-out, not opt-in. Prepare to have your mailbox flooded. Legally.
Sec. 105 (a):
(4) PROHIBITION OF TRANSMISSION OF UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL AFTER OBJECTION- If a recipient makes a request using a mechanism provided pursuant to paragraph (3) not to receive some or any unsolicited commercial electronic mail messages from such sender, then it is unlawful
(5) INCLUSION OF IDENTIFIER, OPT-OUT, AND PHYSICAL ADDRESS IN UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission of any unsolicited commercial electronic mail message to a protected computer unless the message provides--
On the other hand, Sec. 105 (b) (1) (A) (i) and (ii) make it illegal to use address harvesters or dictionary attacks to send spam.
I'm also worried that Sec. 105 (e)'s restrictions on sexually explicit advertising will be struck down as unconstitutional, and may have adverse effects on the rest of the law.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Clearly, you can't just give this database to a spammer and say "here, don't send these people email." What a great recipe for getting more spam.
Instead, the list would need to be secret, and a spammer could send a query: "Is joe@yahoo.com on the list?".
You need to avoid the naive solution, where the list-keeper says "yes" if the address is on the list and "no" if it is not on the list. Otherwise, a spammer could just do a dictionary-type attack on the list to discover as many email addresses as she could. "How about joeb@yahoo? joec?"
You need to instead say "yes" if the address is on the list and then randomly choose "yes" or "no" otherwise. This way if a spammer gets "yes" she doesn't know whether she has a real email address or not.
Ah, but more problems. If the response is truly random, then a spammer can make a repeat request for all the addresses that the list-owner said "yes" for. The ones that actually aren't on the list will have a chance of coming up "no" a second time. Repeat as many times as you want to get a higher certainty that you have obtained usable addresses.
So you instead need some history -- always say yes to "fooxyz@yahoo" even if it is not on the list. And now your memory requirement becomes infinite. Sure you could keep a cache of your most recent responses, but this just delays the time it takes for the spammer to find out who is on the list.
From this brief thought-exercise, I don't know if a "do-not-spam" list is doable. Maybe I'm missing something.
What is clearly much easier to implement is a "please-spam-me" list. The memory requirements would sure be smaller. And no problem making this a publicly-available list. Likewise, it would be easy to prove you are not on the list when you get some spam. And hey, if 90% of uses don't want spam, why should we force them to say "no"?
I actually oppose any anti-spam legislation, not because I enjoy spam, or even think people ought to be able to blast out spam, but because of the potential loopholes in the law.
What I mean by that is this: the Do Not Call movement provided several exemptions; namely, politicians, charities, and anyone you've done business with in the past 9 months (?) is allowed to call you. What I fear is that similar loopholes in spam laws will actually make it harder to block certain spam. As it is today, I can forward spam to whoever owns the netblock it's on and request that they take action; network owners who don't often end up blacklisted, or at least shunned. Suddenly, however, it's harder to get people shut down. A _lot_ of spam comes from places that I've "done business" with in the past 9 months, even if doing business simply means giving my address to them.
All of a sudden, this bill is giving spammers loopholes to hide under; spammers could actually use the legislation in their defense.
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suwain_2
DO NOT mod this down!
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ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
ummspambait@yahoo.com
joeymikeandjaycee@hotmail.com
Well, I appear to have missed the boat on this one, but anyway: Does anybody else have a problem with Internet or Technology specific laws? Does the technological revolution raise any actual, new issues that require new legislation? It is my opinionv that most percieved problems can be equated to equivalent problems in 'real' life with appropriately fast and/or large communication system. Perhaps all that is needed is to establish how the 'old' system relates to the new and how we should move forward in enforcing it, without removing or negating any of the considered rights, checks and balances.
For instance, I do not see bulk/direct messaging as a problem specific to the Internet; junk mail, junk faxes and direct telemarketing seem to be found just as much a problem. Wouldn't it be more sensible if we created a system that addressed all of hteses problems and hopefully may cover future communications environments? As someone suggested most spam is already criminal under fraud laws.
Beating a dead horse here: DRM and TPM are a problem too, because in most countries, people can make non-infringing copies to non DRM enabled platforms; the infringing copies are already criminal by existing copyreight laws. Instead of creating a government mandated monopoly on information perhaps it would be a wiser idea to seriously fund, investigate, and run a program to expand the enforcement of laws on the new platform?
Other examples I won't go into include Import and Export, Wireless Networks and property, Trespass; I welcome any conter arguments to any of these, so hopefully I can smack them down. :P Here's hoping for replies.
All of this could have been avoided if the idiots in the Judicial Branch would have allowed existing 'junk fax' laws apply to email.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.