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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.
The lack of the private remedy is bad (there's nothing more intimidating than looking down the barrel of a loaded lawyer), but at least the law requires the spam to be labeled. That will make it a lot easier to filter out - - provided, of course, that those anonymous sellers of penis lengtheners obey the law. If you can't trust someone like that to be a law-abiding citizen, who can you trust?
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
With the new bill, we have to rely on and trust the 'opt-out' option, something we've been trained NOT to do.
they bought 12 van halen cds for the price of 1
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.
...into thinking this would stop spam anyway?
Nothing can stop spam outside of God.
Blogzine.net
clifgriffin > blog
..just like the anti-virus industry. The laws have glaring loopholes through them but were worded well enough to calm down the masses. Now the anti-spam software industry will grow like mad as spam continues to flood inboxes. It's no coincidence that Microsoft was consulted on the spam laws, they have a vested interest in the after market antispam business.
Trolling is a art,
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."
...end of story. The filthy assholes have NO sense of responsibility. They don't care that they're pissing people off every day or that spam traffic is choking the internet. Kill 'em all, and make 'em suffer.
Our government will shortly be saying that they can not regulate Spam unless they can watch all things moving across the wire. This includes the Net and Voice. The US government is slowly setting up the reason for why they have to monitor everything in our lives.
"My guess is the number of people willing to risk that amount of fines and jail time is not many," said William Nussey, chief executive of Atlanta e-mail service provider Silverpop.
Like that's stopped those spammers that trojan machines. They'll just keep going, and now add "legitimate" spam to the mix. Stuff is going to get a *lot* worse
I hate spammers, but this law is meaningless, as are ALL anti-spam laws:
1. Spammers will ignore the law. Which leads to the next point:
2. Laws are meaningless unless enforced. How will it be enforced? When I get hit with spam that violates this law, who do I complain to? Who will investigate my complaint and then pursue and punish the spammers?
3. Where will all the money and resources come from to enforce this law (see point #2 above) -- to actually enforce this law will take FAR more money and resources than anyone realizes or will admit.
And even if significant money and resources are allocated to enforce the law:
4. What about all the spam originating from servers outside the U.S.
Welcome to the true realization of human nature.
Your only friends here are cynicism and pragmatism.
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.
This has been a public service of the Slashdot community. Don't worry, you can thank us later!
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?
It's not going to stop SPAM just make it honest. They have to provide a real address, label it as commercial, and provide an opt-out that really works. How does this keep me from getting SPAM? I don't give a rats ass about opt outs or addresses I don't want this crap in my in-box to begin with. I'm not even going to mention the bastards overseas who are under no obligation to follow these rules( like they would if they had to anyway).
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
The site has rather conservative advertisements. For example no pop-ups or animated adds in the middle of a text body. What would the site look like if it had the same advertising to content ratio direct marketeers create in their mediums?
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.
The US government still hasn't clued in to the fact that The Internet is a global resource. As such, local entities such as governments are going to have very little power to control it.
The proper solution is to get off our butts and start migrating away from SMTP.
With this new bill marketers must offer an unsubscribe link and respect it. However these is no guarentee your address might reappear by methods they'll claim were opt-in. Additionally we have all been trained that by clicking unsubscribe guarentees you MORE spam and not less. While *some* spammers might follow the rules and properly label their spam and offer reliable unsubscribe options, the shady spammers are guarenteed to gain. Their already operating illegally under a shroud of secrecy so being caught isn't really an issue and they might even see higher click throughs on their unsubscribe links :(
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.'
AOL and MSFT probably deal with more spam headaches than anyone else. I don't really notice them using spam, just trying to filter it in vain from their services.
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).
"Under the federal law, consumers cannot sue og have sex at any given time."
"The bill bans harvesting of e-mail addresses from goatse.cx sites and breaking into computers to send spam."
Why did you add that junk to the article? Was it supposed to be funny or something?
Mod parent down.
GL
If you think about it, marketing as a whole is idiotic. Marketing doesn't produce anything. It's just about steering the masses toward one product at the expense of a competitor, whose product could actually be better.
How about a world where you simply submit your new product to a system of independent reviews, which then informs consumers of their options? I think it would be much better than the system we have now, where effective marketing tends to border illegality.
Marketing isn't needed. Marketing is an ongoing demonstration that mankind is unsophisticated. Get rid of marketing.
Why do I vote again? Oh yeah, I stopped voting since I realized it doesn't matter who wins
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. It's fucked up, this political system we have, but at this point in time our only voice is by voting. I know you feel rebellious to say it, 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.
Post you politician's e-mail addresses everywhere you can
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?
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
then they are entering a business transcation with you.
/images directory.
At that point, feel free to inquire over, and over, and over again about all of their services, and not purchase anything. And their upstream marketing service providers. Chat up their 1-8xx call center staff. Try to see if they're free on Friday.
You will strangely find the front pages to all their websites VERY interesting, worthy of 200 views per hour. Especially all the images in the
It's pro business, after all. Pro-ISP and Pro-Telcom... hehehe.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
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
Alright, I always thought Schumer was stupid weak minded liberal who thinks government can solve all of life's woes, but this proves it:
"It's not going to solve all the problems, but it's the first real step," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The public is demanding something. It's going to happen. We're going to get it done."
Okay, spam is not a government problem, it is a technical problem and no amount of praying or laws (Smart or dumb) are going to solve the problems of spam. Now here is the list why:
1) Most spam that ends up in U.S. mailboxes comes from overseas, so no US law is going to stop that.
2) Spam actually works on an economic level, if it did not, then no one would spam. Spammers spam, because spam works. Destroy the profitiblity of spamming and spam will go away.
3) Spamming is easy. Make it so addresses can not be spoofed, email headers can't be forged and MX records have to match up with A records (All those modem pool modems would not be able to send because no will accept mail from a machine that does not have an correct MX record). I think if you fixed this, then a lot of the spam would just go away.
Linux O Muerte!
Did you even bother to read the article? Yes, it has to be labeled as spam, but the label isn't defined. As a matter of fact, the label is up to the spammer to decide! The FTC is PROHIBITED by this law from defining the label. So how are you supposed to filter out mail based on an arbitrary label defined by the sender?
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
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.
I know that we've been debating spam the effectiveness of Spam legislation here on slashdot for the last couple days. YES, it might momentarily stem the flow of spam, but really laws like this allow too much leeway! If you think this will stop spam you have another thing coming!
Technology on the other hand is the way to go. I recently got feed up with my hotmail account due to spam and I switched to another free site called Shadango.com. It allows me to check both my students address and hotmail thru one interface and it filters the spam out of my email, which is something this new law won't do.
I'm not saying that services like Shadango.com are the answer but they are definitely a step in the right direction! And that's my two cents!!!
Brian
I have to believe that Microsoft understands what spam is doing to the internet, and they must want it to continue working. They are the ones running hotmail after all. No one can buy them off, and any money they might make off spam wouldn't even be visible next to their other products.
is that the govvies are at least TRYING (however uselessly) to solve some of the spam problem. I would've given each spammer 40 lashes, but seeing as special interest groups (including spammers) dominate government nowadays, I'll take what I can get.
From the text of the bill, the mail must provide
But what does that mean? Putting "[AD]" in the subject title? Adding a "is-spam: true" header? Ending the message with "BTW, this is spam"? Some of them? All of them? Any could be could be considered a valid indentification but the vast variety of methods and phrasings could make it very difficult to actually filter out based on these "clear" identifications.
Take a few hours of spam, and fax it to your congress person and senators. Include a letter that explains how the bill is such a bad idea and it will increase the spam. I sent 25 pages to my people with a letter that explained that this was 6 hours of spam on a Sunday. That the bill, if passed will make this much worse. That only opt-in will work and that there must be statutory damages and a private right of action.
Of course, they are welcome to opt out of this campain, from each of us who add them to the list. They may get the point if 500 people do the same thing every few days, and they have to opt out from all 500.
Fight Spammers!
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?"
Is that it doesn't do anything. The govvies weren't trying to help "we the people". They wrote and enacted a law that shelters spammers from "we the people".
How can you tell if a law is unjust? If it makes **ANY** provision at all preventing people from suing those who break the law.
We have been denied access to the third branch of government in order to protect the business interests of spammers.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Politicians are useless. Law enforcement bodies don't even have cyber-crime issues anywhere on their priority list, much less the resources to fight it.
I encourage the population to engage in a number of active efforts to negate the value all these advertisers have, and their tendency now to bombard us all into oblivion with their repetitive, misleading and obnoxious messages.
* When you get spam, report it to Spamcop. Don't even bother with cutting-and-pasting the html source, the web hosting companies of spammers don't care about complaints. Make sure the complaints go to the ISPs who manage the IP space the spammer is operating from. But more importantly, when you report spam to spamcop, the source gets immediately flagged as a spammer and thousands of systems around the world refuse to accept mail from the source. It's VERY effective and the sooner you report spam, the more effective it is. The crap messages don't even get to peoples' mail servers this way. It WORKS!
* Turn off your TV and refuse to let yourself be turned into a quivering ADHD blob with the constant barrage of commercial suggestions. If you must watch TV, do yourself a favor and get a TiVo (it will be the best money you ever spent) and record what you want, when you want, take back your life and best of all skip the commercials!
* If you're feeling the need to waste time complaining, send a letter to your congressman and senators telling them that if they don't put more resources into cyber-crime enforcement you'll make it the center of your life to ensure they can't get elected to anything ever again.
* Spread the word that the only realistic solution to spam is licensing outbound mail relays via a sanctioned body that is nowhere near as incompetent as ICANN. We need an opt-in, international SMTP mail relay whitelist with ethical rules for being included.
* If you've had any bad experiences with companies who've ripped you off, do us all a favor and put up a web page on it and list it with the search engines. Peoples' apathy towards getting railroaded encourges the continuation of these scams. Know someone who's been burned by home-mortgage scams? Publish it! Put it out there forever. Every little bit helps to educate the feebleminded populace,make them more skeptical of suggestions (as well as editorial packaged as "news") and negate the value of quantum advertising.
* Forget client-side e-mail filtering as a spam solution. It will never work and it is a black hole of resources, time and money. Filtering is good for viruses and idiots who still insist on clicking attachments, but it won't ever do much for the spam problem.
* Encourage your ISP to employ relay blacklisting to thwart spammers so they can't even connect to remote systems.
* If you still find yourself occasionally watching tv and are annoyed at misleading ad campaigns, do what I do: dial the 1-800 number repeatedly over the course of the commercial's airing, making the advertiser's efforts counterproductive and sending a message that you're tired of being bombarded, emotionally manipulated and lied to.
* Don't buy any products advertised in any manner in which you find offensive or annoying regardless of the quality/desireability of the product.
* If you still feel your penis isn't big enough, just go to the local store and buy some multi-vitamins or just deal with it. You don't need a bigger penis, newer car, a George Forman grill, closet organizer, no-money-down real estate, second mortgage, questionable mexican placebos packaged as drugs, or to see Holly hump a German Shephard. Pick up the phone and go hang out with friends who like you for who you are and don't buy into the media's constant message that you're inadequate and money will solve this.
Does the OP pay taxes? yes? well, yeah, then he's got a right to bitch.
I don't want you to call me to sell me something, I'll call you.
I don't want you to mail me with advertisements, I'll mail you.
I don't want you to knock on my door to talk to me, I'll knock on your door to talk to you.
I don't want you to send me an e-mail, If I want your product, I'll send YOU an e-mail.
I don't want to drive down the street and look at your signs, I want to see the trees.
I, like many other intelligent people, like to buy things that we need, or want based on research, or discussion with friends and their experiences with the product or service.
So, in conclusion, remember two things,
1. Forcing your product on me is a good way to NOT sell it to me.
and
2. Don't call me, I'll call you.
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
Which is of course completely wrong. There to appear to service providers who are helping the spammers. These organizations will not respond to complaints. The organizations will say that it "is not our problem" even though it appears they receive compensation from the spammer. The organization seem to have a business model that depend on spammers. However, because they are only the conduit, they are not held responsible.
In some ways this is ok. Just like UCE would be much more palatable if the sender did not forge headers and use other deceptive practices. What i would like to see is the ability to prosecute service providers that do not enforce a minimally acceptable terms of service or have a pattern of behavior that aids the spammers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
About, oh, 80-100 characters to the right of the Subject line is a very clear label - "afdgkbj gfda hnrabs sf bgfb sfgfda nhmflwje" :-)
``This bill does not stop a single spam from being sent. It only makes that spam slightly more truthful. whoo hoo! now my penis realy will be 20% bigger!
never drink kool-aid from a big vat
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?
Some of the changes are listed in a news release from Sentator Burns' website:
The final CAN SPAM Act includes changes not in the earlier Senate passed version, including increased damages up to $250 per spam e-mail with a cap of $2 million that can be tripled for aggravated violations. For e-mails using false or deceptive headers, the cap does not apply. Additionally, the revisions to the earlier bill enhance FTC enforcement authority.
This means that the House gets to vote again on the revised bill - probably after Thanksgiving
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
Not that I can find the exact text of the law anywhere, but everything I've read about it says that only ISP's and Attorneys General can sue spammers. My question is what consitutes an ISP? I'm an end-user in most sense of the term, but I own/host several domain names for friends/family, including email services. I do this as a favor and don't make any money off of it, but I am providing an internet service. Does this mean that I can sue spammers as an ISP? After all, it's my mail server, my paid-for bandwidth (even if just a DSL connection) being wasted, and my time wasted trying to beef up my filters to keep the spam out.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
I can't see anyone has mentioned the hilarious and honest name of this new act: CAN-SPAM ("Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act").
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
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.
Seriously speaking, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why anyone is bothered by spam. My ISP runs SpamAssassin, which spam-scores every inbound message and munges the headers with that score. My procmail sorts anything over a particular score into a spam folder, which I periodically empty, usually with a cursory glance to see if there are any false positives (I haven't seen one for four months, by the way). Anywhere from zero to five spams reach my inbox every day, which I delete; if the number starts to creep higher, I might lower my filter threshold. And that's it. Total labor input from me is about fifteen minutes a week. I spend more time than that rinsing out the office coffee pot. So why all this outrage and law-making and angst?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I think we're preaching to the choir complaining about the effectiveness of the bill here, but it might not be a bad idea to address what someone else mentioned, of using technology, but NOT to deal with the spam problem. In truth, this isn't a spam problem, this is a law-enforcement, political priority problem.
Maybe this has been done before, but if not, it seems like a great idea:
How about if we get everyone within their local calling region with the resources to hang a modem on their PC and map an e-mail address that goes directly to the fax machine of their local senators, representatives and district attorneys?
While letting spammers hit these e-mails and bombard politicians' fax machines seems appealing, it might be even more effective to make it very easy for people within their regions to send an e-mail that goes to a politicians' fax machine. (We know most of them don't read e-mail)
I'd be willing to do this in my region. What if we got enough people to do this so we had a nationwide network of e-mail/fax gateways? It seems it would be much more effective to bombard a politician's fax machine with frustrated cries from their constitutients than home-mortgage scams.
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.
While true, when the politician has to pay 8 interns to read their email instead of 1 intern, and they all complain about the amount of disgusting porn they are seeing, they might be more likely to do something about it.
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.
Unfortunately, all the improvements to SMTP that I've heard proposed would still be rendered moot by the insecurity of Windows.
Strong authentication to a mail server that knows you personally? Unforgeable headers? Hash cash? Great ideas, but not ones that will have any effect on millions of compromised Windows systems each sending a small number of messages properly through their own mail servers.
Do you have some improvements in mind which would obviate the zombie-army problem? I'd love to hear them.
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
No. It's even narrower than that. It only applies to the specific line of business of the specific company being advertised. So one spammer can send you a Viagra spam, a mortgage-refinancing spam, an inkjet cartridge spam, a long distance spam, a cigarettes-by-mail spam, an extend-your-warranty spam, an online greeting card spam, a dating service spam, a credit card spam, a debt-consolidation spam, and a wireless video camera spam. You then have to opt out of each one separately.
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
To stop spam, we must make it unprofitable for the spammers to continue sending it.
This is such complete bullshit!
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
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>
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>
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I know, it's does seem to be too good to be true, but hey, they guarantee your money back, so what have we got to lose?
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Almost everyone is missing the fact that laws, even when well written and targeted, are poor substitutes for economic solutions when the undesired activity is economically driven and economic solutions are available. And this law seems particularly badly written. It is pointless to whine and wring our hands over this, since it's fundamentally bad policy to wait for someone else to save us from things we're unwilling to deal with ourselves. Anti-spam legislation was bound, if not to fail utterly, at least to start very badly, like Billy Bob's Mail Order Plans For Home Fusion Power. If you'd like to empower yourself, read the remainder of this post. If you'd just like to gain the satisfaction that there is hope,, read this post.
Why does spam exist?
Most spam seeks to sell something, directly or indirectly. Most spam solicits visits to what might be called "beneficiary Websites" -- the Websites where the touted products are actually sold, usually via e-commerce. Some small percentage of spam solicits responses by phone or fax, a smaller percentage by snail mail, and a very tiny percentage advises you to come to Jesus or some such with no response solicited.
So almost all spam exists because someone hopes to make money from it, and almost all spam solicits responses to beneficiary Websites.
Forget who sends it: Who is responsible for it?
OK, so the largest percentage of spam solicits visits to product or service Websites. Follow the money. Other than the rare "Joe job," such spam is obviously sent either by the Website operator or by a contractor acting on behalf of the Website operator. No one else stands to benefit from the responses to the spam, so no one else will lift a finger to attract traffic to the Website except in some very rare scenarios.
So the true beneficiary of the spam, who is also the party who funded sending the spam, is generally readily visible and reachable. The true beneficiary is almost always also the true source of the spam. The question is: knowing this, what can one do that will be effective?
Counterattack the source
Paul Graham, the researcher and LISP expert who advanced Bayesian filtering a little over a year ago, followed up a few months ago with a paper on Filters that Fight Back (FFB).
The fatal weakness in spam that attempts to attract visits to beneficiary e-commerce Websites is just that: it invites us to visit, and explicitly so. When we accept the invitation and visit the beneficiary Websites, the additional traffic marginally increases the costs of operating the Websites. "So what?" you might ask.
Here's what: the Websites count on the millions of recipients of the spam who are not interested, not to visit the Websites. The flip side of the near-zero cost of sending spam is the near-zero cost of the unresponsive among the recipients. The Website operators send or cause to be sent millions and millions of spam emails but they only have to pay for the server capacity and bandwidth for the tiny response rate from the morons who actually buy stuff. While we can't easily change the low cost of sending spam, we certainly can change the low cost of hosting the servers that have to handle the Web visits that can result from spam. We can do that simply by accepting the invitations contained in spam, and not only accepting the invitations but clicking on every link they have, to make sure to navigate through all their pages.
But that sounds like too much work!
Sure. And dangerous, too, because your browser may not be configured for maximum security. If it were, you wouldn't be able to surf most of the major sites on the Web. But there's a completely legitimate set of tools for downloading Websites for offline browsing. WebWhacker is an old one that
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
It covers precisely the range and points that were widely accepted by the end of the conference. And yes, that means it ended poorly.
A few of us tried to make the point that filtering done at the receiving end does nothing to stop the wasted bandwidth. Furthermore, carrying that extra bandwidth, whether a given user ever sees it or not, means greater equipment purchase, maintanence and replacement costs, and those costs are passed along to the consumer.
Unfortunately even some of the supposedly anti-spam community got suckered into accepting "labeling" and "the false positive problem" and other nonsense. I think they were trying to be fair to the few truly ethical online marketing folks, but in so doing forgot to consider the actual numbers related to the issues, and lost track of perspective.
My hero of the conference was Commisioner Swindell, the older ex-Marine gentleman who found himself seperating a spammer's lawyer and his intended target it a near brawl. I spoke with him, and he was one of the few there who maintained the recognition that the problem is far greater than the stuff that annoys people when they find it in their inbox; an equal problem is that part of their bill due to spam whether they receive it nor not.
A suitable response to this law would be for everyone (in the US at least) to forward any spam they receive to the inboxes of the boneheads who initiated and supported this law, with the statement "IT AIN'T WORKING!"
"Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." -- Lt. Ripley
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
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