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Congress Sends Anti-Spam Bill To White House
sunbird writes "At just after 5 o'clock EST, the House concurred to the Senate's amendments to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (or "CAN-SPAM") (bill in PDF format: here or here). Although the bill will prohibit certain tactics (such as hiding return addresses), critics state that the bill does not go far enough (see this press release). The bill will provide criminal penalties for violations of its provisions (up to five years behind bars), but will not allow private parties to sue spammers. News reports indicate (SF Gate or Forbes) that Bush intends to sign the bill. Prior Slashdot articles are here: 1 2 3."
We covered this. Spam becomes legal 120 days after this is signed, even in states where it wasn't legal before.
Despite popular opinion, a US law will only stop domestic spam, and the weaknesses of punishing the actual company hiring the spammer have been made clear before e.g. Hiring someone to spam your competitors product.
Why not continue working on more effective spam traps and stop legislating morality.
Vegetarians eat Vegetables, Humanitarians frighten me.
The ability for private parties to sue spammers when there is a documented attempt to stop it might help. Most people can't do it, but there are enough people who know what they're doing to be able to track the actual individuals down that it would seem to be helpful.
We the Congress of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect spam heaven, establish Protection, insure domestic Annoyance, provide for the miserable defence, promote the general Chaos, and secure the Blessings of Financial Freedom to ourself and our Contributors, do ordain and establish this Anti-Spam Bill for the United States of America.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Phrase the bill in a way to let them think they're banning pornography! Genius!
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
supposedly the bill was placed on the president's desk a few hours ago, but he threw it out thinking it was garbage.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
First of all, why doesn't THAT surprise me in the least? In other words, "legitimate" marketers, like them or not, get free fun of your inbox the way they do your mailbox. Except, of course, it costs next to nothing to spam people so it will be like them jamming 1000 unwanted credit card apps, catalogs, and other miscellaneous garbage into your mailbox everyday.
Now, some of you might think that "legitimate" businesses won't try to abuse this. For you poor, naive fools, let me tell you that I work in a "legitimate" direct mail company and we junk mail the shit out of people. They ask us to stop? Ok - we stop selling their name and address and then we stop sending them stuff. Of course, if they do business with us again, the whole thing starts over. Yahoo!, in fact, appears to have already caught onto this idea within the realm of spam. Expect to see changes in "privacy policies" to be used more frequently as excuses to override requests not to spam.
In short, expect your spam count to rise. It will just be a little more "honest", as the CAUCE release notes, not a better situation in general. Go Congress. I'm just sooooooo proud of my government at times like this.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The only hope I see now is that maybe the E.U. will get their act together and show up the corrupt U.S. idiots.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No, now spamming is to become legal in the US, it will continue to be the spam center of the world.
Here's a list of the email addresses of all your Congressman. Maybe someone can whip together a script to send them an email asking them to repeal this law, every day until they opt out or repeal the law. Extra karma points for randomizing the title among non-misleading possibilities. Then we just gotta get every single slashdotter to run the program.
All it will take you to succeed with your inventive and novel product is to bring it to the world's attention. May I suggest a marketing campaign designed to target your audience rapidly and with discernment. I realise that commercial e-mail campaigns have had only limited success in the past, but feel that your product would make an ideal subject for such a campaign, blending the futuristic worlds of computer technology and biochemical research.
Remember: 1 hundred million emails can't be wrong. If we send a billion, someone might even buy something!
(It's funny. Laugh.)
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
What we really need is a law to ban all laws with contrived acronyms.
the dyslexic in me read "Congress Sends **** Spam **** To White House". I wonder if Bush has as much use for penis enlargement pills as Clinton might have. Do you think Cheney would be interested in helping a nigerian banker's widow move 6 million USD out of africa?
okay, I have to go back to my boring life now.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
You honestly think that they would have voted for this bill if they actually used their e-mail?
Devote your resources to bringing them bad press in their home district. Remember, all politics is local. Getting e-mails that their staffers will just toss won't bother them a bit. Getting embarassing questions during fundraisers about how they legalized spam will. Remember, this is an election year. Make spam an issue, and they'll HAVE to defend (or reverse) their position.
... would put as much time into forming realistic and meaningful legislation as they spent coming up with titles that form catchy acronyms.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I have a question. Does anyone know for certain if this will pre-empt existing laws in the various states that are more restrictive than this farse that Uncle Sam is pushing through? For example my state has had an anti-spam law for 2.5 years now and I want to use it. Can I still sue a spammer for violating Kansas's anti-spam law? I'm thinking that I can because I read once that this law would pre-empt laws that aren't already on the books (like a new California law IIRC). Can anyone say for sure though. I know I'd like to know and I'm sure others do too.
This doesn't really change much, in that state laws by definition are powerless to stop spam. California will have NO luck whatsoever prosecuting a spammer outside the U.S, and very little luck with a spammer in Wisconsin. There is certainly nothing in the law that requires ISPs or anyone else to deliver spam, so existing blocking and filtering techniques are not affected. Technological solutions are really the only thing that can make an impact on spam, and it helps to be able to prosecute someone who forges headers.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Grover Clevland...now there's a guy who knew how to veto.
(Yes, as a matter of fact I did steal that from The Onion, why do you ask?)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I should like to point out that most politicians, including senators, run their own small to large businesses, of all shapes and sizes in some way- keeping their hands far enough away to avoid conflict of interest.
Do you really think that THEIR companies don't spam people?
And of course the usual suspect lobbies don't help much either, considering this is also politics + business.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
...it gives each marketer in the United States one free shot at each consumer's e-mail inbox
Can a subcontracted person be defined as a 'marketer'? I.E., Joe Spammer pays 'John Smith' $50 to one-time spam 3,000,000 addresses from his email account. 'John Smith' uses a valid return address but abandons account after the dirty deed is done. Technically within the law?
Tell Cheney they've discovered oil where spammers are located. Watch the bombs start falling.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
I know it doesn't allow Private Parties to sue, but I have affiliations with a smaller company that is an ISP for other ISP's. They have like 8 OC48's. Would THEY be able to sue people due to spams I receive through their network?
The President's come under some criticism of late because he hasn't vetoed any bills in this term. Maybe we can give him a reason to change that.
White House contact info is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ The most effective communication for this type of this thing is a real phone call and fax.
If you decide to fax a note, the general rules of thumb are to address the issue in the first sentence, to keep it short, be concise with your reasoning, and to note anything that gives you expertise relating to the issue.
These guys actually do keep track of the mail.
Actually, my US senators and representative do use e-mail and have responded to my comments. No more meaningfully than to snail mail, but they use it. I feel no more disenfranchised when e-mailing them than I do when I used to send letters.
On the bright side, my state representative uses e-mail very effectively, both responding to my comments, sending out information and requesting feedback on topics with which he is concerned.
The only one I fail to hear from is my state senator, who gets elected by the party majority on the other side of my district and ignores anything that deals with my concerns.
The state rep admits spam is out of control, and recommends using good filtering because anything politically palatable enough to pass will be weak and ineffective. Long live open source MTA's and MDA's, rule-based and Bayesian filters. Really, can any legislation keep up with spammer technology? Heck, those open source solutions are about 97% effective from my data and require tuning to stay effective.
I should note one interesting wrinkle. Unlike what is common in other Federal laws, the act "supersedes any statute, regulation, or rule of a State or political subdivision of a State " but says _nothing_ about the District of Columbia. Soooo, if people can rally the DC council to pass a California-like law, perhaps there may be a new place to host your mail servers.
A final copy of the act can be found on my website. http://www.hypertouch.com/legal/s877-eas.html
I'm pretty pessimistic about things right now. Here are my chief concerns about the bill.
1."I CAN SPAM " Act legalizes unlimited spam -- even after"opt-outs "
The "SEPARATE LINES OF BUSINESS OR DIVISIONS " clause in the act permits spammers to send repeatedly to you even after you've opted out as long as they change domain names, a.k.a. lines of business.
The impression we have is that the DMA asked for this so that one cannot opt out of spam from the Fortune 500 by giving notice to their corporate HQ, you have to track down each"Division. " But more to the glorious point from the Viagra spammers perspective, see what happens if I opt out of a spam for today's mail bin: (picked at random)
By my sending email (or going to Prosize-Health.biz or whatever hoops they choose to put up for their process), I can"opt out. " However that spammer will be able to spam me LEGALLY from all of their other lines of business, e.g. Biggersize-health.biz, etc. Note that the spammer's email only represents itself as Prosize-Health.biz... All they have to do is spend $7 every couple of weeks for a new domain for their new"Line of Busines " (they might even bother to call it a new Division) and they are home free. There is NOTHING I can do to stop this. I can track down every big spammer and personally serve them with an opt-out, but that doesn't trickle down to their thousands of "Divisions. "
Let's be clear -- Spammers are already talking about this open license on their bulletin boards and mailing lists.
2."I CAN SPAM " punishes only the spammer, not the marketer
By rotating through US based spammers, or using untraceable overseas spammers, often in Russia or China, businesses will be allowed to advertise via spam with abandon. The great strength of the upcoming California law is that is target both the marketer and the spammer. That will be gone when California laws are made void. For example, we have been trying to get Discover Credit Card to stop sending spam to us for over 18 months. They literally just regularly rotate through new
and not the spammers. I remember a while back there was a posting about the telemarketers that gave their phone number. After a few phone calls, they decided they didn't like their own medicine very much and even changed their phone number. Like most things we American's take on, we work our asses off for a very short period of time and then get tired of trying and most of us give up. I propose that we contact the companies whose products are advertised in spam, and inform them of how we do not approve of their marketing method.
Yes, spam is cheap and that is why it is so profitable for not only the spammer but the company that paid a direct marketing firm to advertise their product. Most companies have toll free numbers. If 1/1000th of the people who recieve spam for a product from a company in the US called this company, their marketing model would fall apart.
This would at least reduce spam for somewhat legitimate products. However, at best, we would only pull this off one time, and in a few months, all these companies would be right back at it.
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
tend to use proper english and other tells that crap spammers don't. I have no problem with spam that's sent that follows rules. It makes filters much more effective.
I had a problem with spammers sending spam with popunders. I added in a rule to Mercury to delete any message that contained the line "script langage=javascript." BAM. No more of those. In fact, I'd really appreciate if all spammers would use Java-script in their messages.
Don't like Yahoo spamming you? Guess what? They follow rules and guidlines for their messages. All you have to do is figure out what tells their messages have and configure your mail server to block any messages that match those tells.
No, this isn't going to fix the whole spam problem but at least it's making it easier to block.
I don't get any e-mails with the ADV: in the subject either. More spammers should follow that rule. "Legitimate" spammers do follow that rule. So I really don't care if the government gives them an out. My mail filter can handle them just fine without legistlation.
It's the idiots that invent new combinations of words and letters that are a problem. We need legislation to be able to go after those we can as well as techical means and social means to get them to knock it off.
There are laws about litter, too. That hasn't solved the litter problem but it helps a bit. And just like litter, everyone needs to do their part with spam. Maybe we should take a hint from Singapore and start caneing people who spam.
Not doing anything because it's not 100% is just silly. There is no silver bullet for spam. It's nice to know that Congress has the sense to at least make some kind of dent. On top of legislation we also need technical solutions and social solutions.
Pretending we should just focus on one solution is going to accomplish exactly zero.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I currently have a Hotmail account. One of the things that annoys me is that emails from Microsoft can't be blocked by the internal filter. They always seems to be writing to me, to alert me to the fact that if I pay I can get more features. This to my way of thinking is spam. Will this be blocked? If it is, what does it mean for emails that alert me to the fact that my inbox is nearing its limit? Will they be forced to start deleting my emails if I go over limit without warning because they will be banned for alerting me. I know, I know, I shouldn't even bother with Hotmail, but sometimes it is useful to have web-based email addresses, and this type of issue will surely affect all mail providers.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
How in the hell did this get modded informative?
Had you read the bill (which is more than most congresscritters do, but I digress) you would have seen that:
In other words, laws like Washington's are affected not in the slightest.
Wake up, /.'ers, the sky isn't falling. True, it isn't the greatest (or even a terribly "good" antispam bill,) but politics is the art of the possible. Nowhere is it more true than in politics that the perfect is the enemy of the good. We'll get a good law eventually.
That's what might get Congress's attention. Put 50 million email addresses on their do-not-spam list. Put the fear of losing an election in your Congressman.
I wouldn't register my REAL email address on that list, of course. Heaven forbid that the spammers get ahold of it. But I have a couple of Hotmail addresses that I use for all dubious lists, postings, and web sign-in forms. (Hotmail because it amuses me to send the spam to Microsoft and make them pay for the bandwidth.) If we could all register 50 million addresses of ANY sort on that list I think there might be a chance to get real legislation passed.
Maybe it's not a fool proof plan (this is the US Congress we are talking about here) but it can't hurt. So sign up and sign your immaginary friends up too. I know I'll be making email accounts just to add to this list, in case I like suddenly need a new spam free email account.
So now they will send spam to you with a subject line of "Hi" about Mini RC Cars and Viagra and you can't do a thing about it under Federal or WA law. California law did prohibit that, but we're hosed. The one thing you might be able to preserve is a private right of action in a state court, but that will be a battle someone has to be willing to finance. The big ISPs won't do it, they'd rather file in the Federal Court down the street from their HQ.
Or the part where Lincoln did.
Also, three other types of claims may asserted. First, State attorneys general may sue spammers on behalf of state residents. See Section 7(f)(1). Second, ISPs may sue spammers. See Section 7(g)(1). Third, the Federal Trade Commission, and certain other federal agencies, may sue spammers. See Section 7(a)-(b).
Not that I'm disagreeing.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Too bad, in this debacle, both parties are equally culpable.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
It may interest you that the EU has passed a directive requiring opt-in. Several states have implemented this into national law already.
Fines here in Sweden are stiff, up to $500k for infractions.
This law has no silly exceptions for charities, religious institutions, etc. The notable exception to the spam law is if you have a previous business relationship with the sending party; I think such an exception is reasonable -- assuming an implied acceptance of marketing material from existing business partners, if nothing else has been stated. In the same breath, though, let me mention that such an acceptance of marketing e-mail within a business relationship can be expressly revoked at any time, even if previously expressly permitted, also as mandated by the same law.
In Sweden, this law goes into effect on April 1, 2004 (I don't know if there is a hidden meaning in that, but I hope not).
It is also interesting to note that the law is very broad in scope and covers all text-, video-, and image-based communications where the delivery has a store-and-forward model -- it explicitly covers SMS messaging as well, for example.
Now, with this said, I shouldn't hope too much that the US, like you say, "show up the corrupt U.S. idiots". The current administration is not known for its humility and desire to learn from other people and cultures.
(In fact, as a side note, I am amazed at how this administration has managed to turn the mainstream attitude in Europe from "want to be an American too" to "would pick up arms tomorrow against the US if I had the opportunity" in just a few years. It's absolutely unbelievable how arrogant the current president has managed to come himself across to the world; I'm not sure the sheer level of this is realized within the American borders.)
Would that be the guy that we (the US) armed?
And allowed to kill Iranians with poison gas?(with sat data no less)
Is this the same guy that killed all the kurds and sheites (sp) that we told to rise up and overthrow Saddam - the ones we promptly left to suffer murder and torture at Saddams hands?
Is this the same guy we sent biological weapons stocks to?
Could it be the same guy that was told by April Gillaspie (the US ambassador to Iraq) that we didn't have an opinion on their disagreement with Kwuait - it was an arab affair? Then Saddam invades?
Sure, Saddam was the Executioner. We just loaded his gun for him and looked the other way when the blood ran.
Sheesh - and this is supposed to make us look good?
Ashcroft is no Hitler. But he's quickly stripping away the very rights our independence minded fore-fathers risked death to win.
IMHO, Washington, Jefferson and the others who risked their very lives in signing that document in 1776 would be more than willing to agrue the point that Ashcoft has committed treason.
Unlimited detention with no juducial review - simply at the whim of the leader of the country - that was one of the situations in England that they found so repugnant! (How short our memory! One would think we of all people wouldn't forget these things.)
Cheers,
Greg
There's been a last-minute change in the bill. The version passed by the Senate and approved by the House was to take effect 120 days after enactment. A last-minute change makes the bill effective January 1, 2004. This prevents California's tough anti-spam law from being in effect for over three months.
Quoth the poster:
So now they will send spam to you with a subject line of "Hi" about Mini RC Cars and Viagra and you can't do a thing about it under Federal or WA law.
Why not? Washington law specifically forbids "false or misleading information in the subject line." The Federal law specifically does not pre-empt any law dealing with falsity. The primary reason that spammers had in falsifying information in their headers was that many states had prohibitions on spam. WA (and MD, etc) put laws on their books prohibiting emails with such falsehoods which nicely side-stepped the problem of being content related.
And they still do. Friend, if you think the spammers are going to start putting their real IP addresses in the headers, you're smoking weed. If you think Washington's law has made a difference in this regard, you're on crack. No, I suspect that there will be plenty of grist for my mill for the foreseeable future.
So, tell me again what the problem is?
"S877" goes into my blocking keyword list today
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
500 megabytes in length. Now that spammers have to start using valid return addresses, maybe they'll start receiving and honoring my unsubscribe request.
In a bizarre bit of twenty first century irony, Congress has begun using zomby computers all over the internet to flood the white house with copies of the anti spam bill.
"The president said I am tired of people e-mailing me about penis enlargement etc.... I want to receive something substantial about reducing spam. I guess we misunderstood him to mean that was what he wanted in his inbox" said Tom Daschle.
"The worst thing about this e-mail is that the last line says 'The president of the United States hopes that you will send this to 75 of your closest friends' That guarantees we will see this for a long while" states Dick Cheney.
Could this technically make the use of nym servers illegal? Remailers in general?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........