U.S. Spam Law to Take Effect Jan. 1

We lead with news that the U.S. 'anti'-spam law, written largely by the Direct Marketing Association, will enter into effect on January 1. The bill preempts existing state laws which are tougher (states' rights anyone?), so for many citizens, this is purely a pro-spam law. The FTC is thinking about bounty hunters to enforce the new law (which you can and probably should read for yourself).

Comments

Please opt-out - 10,000 times

[loggia]

Yes, this is a great law. Even if spammers follow the law, you'd have to opt-out for every
"company" spams you.

That is going to work great. Put this one right up there with the Medicare Bill on the list of "2003 Who Cares If It Doesn't Work, We Passed It" legislation.

Re:What is going on in the US?

[FortKnox]

Its a step in the right direction, but isn't what you think it is.

Its a law that forces soliciters to acknowledge who they are (nothing really big), but the one kicker is to enforce that if you opt out, the spammer actually opts you out.

useless law

[thoolihan]

This seems like another useless law around here. As others have pointed out, off-shore spam won't change a bit from this. Also, this won't affect the most annoying spam I get, the junk email from companies that I have an account with. No matter how many times I check my privacy preferences they send me email about how I can pay my bill online.

Technology could have solved this problem a better way. But leave it to the federal gov't to reign over another portion of our lives.
-t

"anti-spam law"

[burgburgburg]

Clear Skies
No Child Left Behind
Healthy Forests
Patriot Act

Doublethink doubleplusgood!

not that bad.

[Lumpy]

(2) uses a protected computer to relay or retransmit multiple commercial electronic mail messages, with the intent to deceive or mislead recipients, or any Internet access service, as to the origin of such messages,

(3) materially falsifies header information in multiple commercial electronic mail messages and intentionally initiates the transmission of such messages,

It prohibits Fake headers and abusing relays and proxies. Granted, this will only start the use of throw away email addresses that are used once for sending the 20 billion pieces of spam.

People are complaining that it's pro-spam... I see that it is a start in the right direction. 99% of the spam I get is from outside the US anyways so I expect that it will not do much to change the amount of spam out there and in that note, if mister spammer moves his spamming operation outside the country then this law has no teeth.

nice if you can enforce it.

[PreviouslySeen]

"It is hard to locate spammers, and it'd be very hard without subpoena power,".

And once you do find one (with or without the help of bounty hunters), what then? Im sure law enforcement will really care. Maybe the politicians will push for an example or two, but this will have no real impact.

Re:Opt-in for all email...

[Shimmer]

Opt-in is a lousy idea. Don't you want to be able to receive legitimate e-mail from people you haven't met yet?

Perhaps someone wants to write you a note about your web site. Or maybe someone read an article that you wrote and would like to discuss it. Or maybe an old friend from high school wants to send you an e-mail out of the blue.

If we shut off the possibility of such introductions, the Internet will become an even drier place than it is now.

Opt out?

[RT Alec]

The problem with "opt-out" is two-fold:

• First, we have all been trained (correctly) to NEVER opt-out, since it confirms our e-mail address is valid. How do we know if a particular spam is from someone who will obey the law?
• Second, it can often be difficult to opt-out anyway, purely from a technical standpoint. I receive e-mail addressed "To:" several addresses, including "info@", "webmaster@", etc. While I am savvy enough to reconfigure my e-mail client to send an e-mail that appears to be "From:" any of my addresses, it is a pain. Most people will not know how to do this, and many people (AOL, etc.) do not use an e-mail client that is capable of altering the sending address.

If the law mandated that opt-out must be implemented by use of a web link (e.g. "This message was addressed to john.doe@mail.us, click the link below and you will be removed immediately"), that would be a little better. None of this detracts from the overriding issue, and that is by requiring opt-out instead of opt-in (either double opt-in or a verification link) this law essentialy legalizes, indeed encourages, spam.

Re:compression

[gantos]

Here's my version: The Direct Marketing Association drafted an anti-spam law to protect US from THEM.

We're screwed.

Offshoring the Spam

[handy_vandal]

Are there enough spammers in the United States to make it worth the bounty?

Not for long -- anti-spam bounties will drive the remaining US spammers offshore.

Maybe we should just keep the vile stuff here at home. I think Lyndon Baines Johnson put it well when he said "Better to have the skunk inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in." :)

But seriously -- no US bounty is going to affect non-US spammers. And if the bounty does actually hit US spammers where they live, expect international spammers to pick up the slack.

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

-kgj

No, it isn't

[burgburgburg]

The weak Federal law was specifically advanced/signed to supercede and eliminate the tough state laws. The spam industry (and those who benefit from them) feared aggresive state level prosecutions (think what Eliot Spitzer could do to them). They got a "law" that says it is doing something, doesn't actually stop anything, and protects them from everyone who might try to stop them legally.

Re:No, it isn't

[schon]

assuming that the law did work, who's to say that spammers can't skip the US

Nobody's saying they can't - people are saying they won't

Spammers are sociopaths, like any other sociopath, they do what they do because it's the path of least resistance. They are not spamming because they believe in their rights, they are spamming because they want money, and this is the easiest way to get it.

It's like saying, when the War On Drugs(tm) started, "what's to stop all the pot dealers from moving to Amsterdam"?

Unlike pot dealers, spammers (by definition) can't conceal their identities/location (they have to broadcast some way to contact them, otherwise they have no way to get your money.)
If spam truly became illegal, I think spammers would move to other, less publically visible ways to steal.

Re:Opt-in for all email...

[shakamojo]

"To just change the email system around isn't feasable."

If this were true than everyone would still be using CTSS Mail circa 1965. I'm not saying that we take on the "preposterous" job of implementing a worldwide change overnight, I'm merely suggesting that some thought be put into how we move forward.

If you think that SMTP will still be "de rigour" thirty years from now, you're in for a surprise, by then it will have gone the way of CTSS Mail, Autodin, Multics, the ARPANET, etc... things change!

Re:And now we can do some real work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want the US business reputation to sink to that of Nigeria?

Uh...apparently you don't read /. much. With SCO, Microsoft, Halliburton and others the question should be, "Don't you wish the US business reputation could rise to the level of Nigeria?"

Re:Opt-in for all email...

[RedHat Rocky]

Oh, I suppose the United States should have shelved the whole of idea of a free nation and just stayed an English Colony?

Please pull your head out of the sand. Thoughtful, coordinated change is good. There is certainly room in SMTP for improvement, all we need do is reach a consensus on what to do and then get it done. There are several proposals in the works, such as SPF, MS DNS records (or RMX), which all do the same thing: provide a way for a single domain to say "My mail is sent from such and such IP". An excellent idea, fairly easy to implement and solves the real problem: fraudulent mail headers.

Wrong way to go about it

[TheBigx00FF00]

It's funny, many of those authoring "cyber" legeslation, never seem to understand the scope or technology behind the problems they attempt to solve. For example, what stops me from setting up a machine in Ethiopia and sending my important msg about erectile dysfunction, and my new miracle cream to millions of US addresses? What stops me from plucking any number of wide open .hk hosts of the network and using them to send out my spam? This "Anti-Spam" law is merely an attempt to appease he voting public, and show that our government is "doing something about the problem". The best way to get rid of spam is to target the companies using it as a means of advertising. Online money transactions have the longest paper trail and validation setup of any other consumer service online. If they're capable of receiving payments online, they're capable of being tracked down.

Re:Please opt-out - 10,000 times

[stinky_hippie]

I've always been leary about OPT-OUT options on shady spam emails. On more "legitimate" advertisement spams, like maybe concert updates from a venue I bought tickets from, there is always a tag-line at the bottom that gives instructions for how to be removed from the list. I trust this to a degree and believe that it will get my email taken off of the list.

When I get spam for "make your penis bigger and keep it up all weekend", I wouldn't trust any link they put in their email anyways. For one it could be a link to a site that might try to hijack my browser or do something else nasty (although that wouldn't happen because we all keep current on our patches and use less vulnerable browsers like Mozilla :) ). Another thing I've always thought of is that if I send a message to be removed from their list then all I'm doing is confirming that my email address is valid and currently in use. Sure I may get removed from that one list, but now my email address has been confirmed as active and can be put on a whole crop of new spam lists. I don't have any proof that this is what happens, but in my paranoid mind it makes alot of sense.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

No no no! You're only supposed to talk about states' rights when a Democrat is in office! Only traitors and terrorist-sympathizers would disagree.