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Spammers Pleased with 'Anti'-Spam Act
grung0r writes "A post at Ed Foster's Gripelog explains why the new anti-spam law that Congress is passing isn't a good idea: 'it's clear that only the Direct Marketing Association, Microsoft, AOL and a handful of others had any input into the law, because it's carefully crafted to allow the big marketers free reign. And the loopholes it provides them will be more than big enough to provide aid and comfort for the smallest and sleaziest of spammers as well.' More about the problems with the law can be found at cauce.org." The direct marketers are dancing in the streets over it.
Those who can do: Do.
Those that can't do: Spam.
Seems to me that the act is pretty pro-business all around. It's pro-business in the spammer sense since it lets marketers send unsolicited mail and it's pro-business in the anti-spammer sense since the existence of spam will keep anti-spammers in business!
What more would you expect from a capitalist country?
John.
Guess we're stuck with Plan B.
(Just Kidding)
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I thought polititions were smart about naming bills (USA Patriot) so that they could dupe the electorate into thinking anyone who didn't vote for it was the spawn of Satan.
I don't know how signing a bill called "CAN Spam" is going to help anyone get re-elected.
So Brian Morrissey, the Senior Editor of the DMNews, thinks spam isn't all that bad. That consumers shouldn't be able to sue to take back their inboxes.
I guess we can't say he's not putting his money where his mouth is, though... he put his email in a clickable link right there on the DMNews.com site.
Of course, some spammers may exclude dmnews.com from their spidering. That does Mr. Morrissey a huge disservice! Clearly, unsolicited email is something he strongly supports, and we should help him in any way we can.
So if anyone would like to include bmorrissey@dmnews.com on their email list, I'm sure Brian Morrissey would not mind at all! After all, Mr. Brian Morrissey (whose email address is bmorrissey@dmnews.com) is Senior Editor of "The Online Newspaper of Record for Direct Marketers." He probably knows the Webmaster and the Postmaster, too, and I'm sure they would never consider UCE to be Abuse.
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Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) web page has an opt out of junk mail page hidden in there somewhere, where for 5$ via internet or free via mail you can opt out of junk mail. I did it and it works remarkable well. It takes time to start up , but all members of the DMA are required to not send to addresses on the opt out list.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Of course one has to wonder how many spams are from legit businesses that are members of DMA?
I would highly doubt that they check their own mail without having it filtered through somebody first anyhow. Likely it passes through antispam, then through a person, then to the recipient (and if it's opposing their views, into the great round filing cabinet).
In the end, it would probably be up to their technicians to solve any spam problem, and the screaming load on the servers would just be footed at the expense of taxpayers.
It looks like some bizarre vicious circle: the spammer doesn't even care if you are going to respond to the "opt-out" clause in their mailings simply because by the time the opt-out reaches them, they wil already have sold your address to 5 other spammers and made their money on you.
Am I wrong or the bill simply doesn't address the list reselling practice? (Granted, I haven't read the actual legislation - just the press coverage).
There. You have it. The anti-spam bill is a pro-spam bill.
I still wonder how the government will justify the fact that spammers use, without paying a red cent, the facilities of others to do their dirty deeds.
This is in direct contrast to other direct marketers. Junk mail? Every letter requires a 37 cent postage stamp. Junk faxes and phone calls? These require payment by the sender of flat phone rates and calling charges.
Spam, however, is virtually free for the sender, piggybacking on other people's equipment. It's the first form of direct marketing *in history* in which the unhappy recipient pays (through increased ISP costs) for the priviledge of receiving messages.
The US government, in effect, has declared that all online citizens will be forced endure, and to pay for, receipt of unsolicited spam -- and, what's more, have no recourse, as private individuals, in the courts. A sad day overall.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
A registry and opt-out links are of no help to me when the message also contains no information identifying which of my e-mail addresses they addressed their spam. Mail to any username at my domain goes to me. With Bcc'd spam, I can't identify the address they used to tell them to stop.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If anyone here thinks for a minute that this abominable piece of legislation is an "accident" caused by those writing it being non-technical, wake the hell up.
Every single word of this bill was intentionally crafted to do what it does -- make Congress look anti-spam to everyone except spammers. This is a Congressional "wink and nod" to all the scum out there who are more than happy to cost you money to try to sell you something.
Remember, kids, messing with other peoples' computers "for fun" is bad and wrong and the FBI will hunt you down. If you're going to make money at it, and of course you allocate some of that money to bribing^Wlobbying Congress, thats a whole different story. Sigh.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
It seems to me that legislative and technical measures against Nigerian toner enlagement offers have only had limited success. For some time, it has occurred to me that an attack on the spammers business model might be a more effective strategy. It only takes a very few idiots who respond to spam to keep the bad guys in business. I suspect there will always be idiots, so this is not likely to be an effective way of attacking spamers. However, they may still be vulnerable on the cost side. For instance, if every slashdotter was to ask a spammer to spam on their behalf (and then of coursze not follow through, or pay up), then spammers would be forced to spend a great deal of time and energy detecting real customers amongst all the time wasters. This would undoubtedly raise their costs. All it would take is a few people with 'disposable' e-mail accounts, to give spammers a real headache. Has anyone tried this approach? Would anyone be prepared to organise such an effort? I am sure that I know a few people who would be more than willing to spend 10 mins a day causing spammers trouble. What do you all think?"
I think that laws can't hurt things...but i also know that technology certainly helps things. I actually was a beta-tester for shadango.com about 6 months ago. I've been using it ever since and my inbox has been virtually spam-free. I don't know if spammers just don't know about it yet or if their filters are just that good.
Plus it's got a bunch of nifty options like a file manager, disposable email addresses, and it's got 20MB of space.
Definitely worth the gander....
-Kevin
Mr. Morrissey can think and write as he wishes - but I should not be obligated to read his output (or that of the millions of spamming brethren he represents) or have either me or my business pay for them. Spam forces others to listen to the author's viewpoint and forces the unwilling listener to pay for it. Spam as free speech is a method not entirely consistent with the 1st Amendment you claim to defend.
If spam is free speech, then there's nothing wrong with Mr. Morrissey getting some. If it's wrong, then there's something wrong with his defense of it. Your defense of his stance is thus not consistent. Don't worry, though, there's still time for you to join the SCO legal team before they go out of business - they could use your incisive wit to support their further incursions into legal insanity.
Most spammers can verify the validity of your email address because of those script images (ex ), right?
Not if your firewall prohibits your email client from connecting to port 80.
In my setup, my email client is only allowed to connect to ports 25 and 110, and those only at my host's mail server.
So all those web bugs and pictures come through as broken links. I can still click on URLs in an email, because clicking a link passes the address to my web browser, which is allowed out (not directly out, of course, but via two proxies that reformat HTML and remove cookies.)
So even though I'm running the notorious Microsoft Outlook in "show preview" mode, I have no problems.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I find it unfortunate that it took an AC to say the obvious.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and nobody needs spam except the amateur P.T. Barnum's of the world who know that some fool somewhere is going to think the email they just recieived is anything more than a "ping" with a bandwidth "hoover" attached to it.
The law is of no use to anyone here except the politicians, who see another way to take taxpayer dollars and a possible vector to ratcheting more control over what people do or say on the Internet.
When someone forms a professional, international association that is underground, working with cells and transferring funds through a system of hard-to-track parcels and couriers that can "touch" spammers and let them know that they have screwed up and that the law cannot help them. They get one warning and a probation period. After that, they're a bounty. Imagine the time and money that would be saved by large corporations or even individuals who could effectively stop the problem for a relatively small ammount of money.
In some countries, such a system has existed and is usually affiliated with trafficking controlled materials and protecting said supply-lines. It would be nice to see something like that influencing the idiots who think they've just found a get-rich-quick scheme.
Idiots don't care unless you tap them on the shoulder and let them know that someone they have affected can touch them back.
And the idiots that don't learn.
They need to be double-plus touched.
It's not just double-speak,
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Chomsky explains all this in his writings. Basically, what with the extremely low voter participation rates in this country, we have pretty much given over control of the state to corporate interests. The govt and the media collaborate with corporate interests to make sure we are a captive audience for advertising, and a captive labor pool.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Once the law is in place and spammers are allowed to let fly with impunity without fear of prosecution (because, as one person pointed out, it's free for them to use the resources of others in order to do so), then someone will get the bright idea of making it cost money to send spam.
And viola`-- they will have conned us into begging them to "tax the internet", which is something they have been trying to figure out ever since it showed up on their radar screen. Sure it's neat, but how can we TAX it?
Since the postal mail address of the spammer must appear in the body of the email, we will be able to make a list of those addresses and filter based on that.
This is actually better than filtering based on a single tag like [ADV], as you will be able to whitelist and blacklist based on the postal address.
While the law doesn't specify a way to mark a message as spam, it does say:
"(2) PROHIBITION OF DECEPTIVE SUBJECT HEADINGS- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission to a protected computer of a commercial electronic mail message if such person has actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that a subject heading of the message would be likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message (consistent with the criteria are used in enforcement of section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 45))."
So if you were to write a negative test on "this is not an ad" in the subject line, any spam getting through would be breaking the law.
Not realistic, just an illustration that this bill isn't COMPLETELY useless. At least it makes forging headers explicitly illegal, that alone is a big step.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
And we made sure there's no useful legal remedy against you!
As an added bonus, we're going to require, at no extra charge, already included in your kind and generous campaign donations, a special feature whereby your victims have to go to your very own webpage to hunt for some "opt-out" mechanism - wink wink!
Just think of all the pop up ads you can sell!
Spamming has never been so profitable and thanks to your very own congresspeople, such as Billy Tauzin, every legitimate business trying to pump up next quarter's earnings has a whole new "legitimate" revenue stream!
We heard your concerns that requiring an identifier might make effective spam filters possible, reducing the profitability of the CPU time and disk space of your victims that you steal, so we made sure the mechanism is utterly useless by making it illegal for the FTC to define a uniform identifier!
But what's that you say - those jail times and fines sound scary? Not to worry - nobody but the FTC can even instigate a prosecution and to do so, your victims have to "prove" your address obfuscation was intentional haha! Ever hear of someone proving a negative?
So no worries - you're home free, thanks to us, your humble legislative servants. We've delivered, now give us our next contribution.
Sincerely,
Congress.
Yeah, but the current "democratic" political systems being used around the world are not democratic at all.
What's needed is a significant change that empowers *the people* to have the final say on attempted government abuse of rights and excesses.
Although this paper was written with a different political system to the US in mind (the Westminster system) it's still every bit as applicable to the USA.
Take a look and ask why citizens aren't demanding this "final say" in laws that are passed?
Recoverable Proxy.
If you don't vote, then guess what? You don't get the right to bitch and moan when things don't go the way you want them to, plain and simple.
George Carlin has a hilarious routine that argues just the opposite: those that participate in a system they know to be wrong have no right to complain when it behaves as expected. Only those who do not vote can reasonably say they are not responsible for the misdeeds of those who have been elected to office.
It's fucked up, this political system we have, but at this point in time our only voice is by voting.
If you really believe that is your only voice, you are as powerless as those you vote for want you to be. If you instead believe your cause is just, revolution is possible. That may sound like terrorism to some, but I shouldn't have to point out to anyone on Slashdot that from the perspective of England, the actions in the American Colonies were just that. Or, to quote an American President 40 years dead: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Before I begin, I would like to state that I vote.
...
;)
"You don't get the right to bitch and moan when things don't go the way you want them to, plain and simple"
No. nowhere in the constitution does it say the right to speech is governed by whether or not you vote.
The fact that they feel disenfrnchised mean us voters need to work at showing them that getting involved does, in fact, work.
I would hate to miss a good point someone may make because they didn't vote.
" but at this point in time our only voice is by voting."
Actually, writing letters, emails, collect petotions, join like minded political groups, letter to the editor of you local newspaper, etc
we have many voices. The just need to be used.
" I know you feel rebellious to say it, "
haha, The Irony of feel rebillous doing something most people do is often lost on the young.
" but understand that this is a very real case where if you aren't trying to be a part of the solution, you are, by default, a big part of the problem."
so that means, if you like the way things are going and do nothing, you're part of the solution?
"Politicians doubtfully are the first to read their email. More than likely you'd be targeting an intern, whose job is to wade through the inbox to pick out the handful of real emails. I don't think your point will get across to them, do you?"
actually yes. When they get 200 viagra ads an hour, and they can't opt out, they'll get the picture.
A lot of money went into campaign coffer to stop the telemarketing bill, and it still passed.
I forget who daid it, but Jr. Senators used to get told:
"If you can't take there money, drink there liquor, and fuck their women, and then vote against them, you're in the wrong line of work"
Mostly paraphrased.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Never make the mistake of thinking that the majority of people are less stupid than the average person.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey