Slashdot Mirror
FTC Adopts New Rule For Sexually Explicit Spam
enforcer999 writes "As you know, the CAN SPAM ACT preempted many state laws that were tougher on spammers. For instance, many of the laws that were enacted by states included a requirement that sexually explicit SPAM be labeled as such. The FTC, in charge of adopting rules, came up with a new rule that will require sexually explicit SPAM to be labeled as such. Hmm? I think the states were already trying to do this before the Federal government preempted them. Anyway, I wonder if it will work?"
Given that spammers break the law so readily can this be anything other than another aspect of the law that they ignore?
not workable ? thought so.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
...I propose that all spam should have the word "SPAM:" in the subject line, to make it easier for the recipient to filter out unwanted emails etc. etc.
My other processor is big-endian.
So your solution would make it illegal to buy things from the spammers? That is the analogue I drew. Why punish the "victim" and not the perpetrator? Would you throw a rape victim in jail? You also need a license to watch television in the UK. Don't get me wrong, I love the UK (Northern Ireland especially), but that is not an act I would like to follow. If the stations are broadcasting illegally, find out why. Is it because of restrictions on speech, red tape, exorbitant fees that only people with deep pockets can afford? The more voices you have, the better. I read a study that stated that ~60% of SPAM originates in the US (yay, were number 1!). I do not know if that means "starts here, then gets shot off to a Chinese server, then bombards inboxes back in the US". If so, where would the law take affect? At the originating machine? At the mailserver? Somewhere in between? We need to come up with some hard, fast guidelines worldwide if we have any serious desire to end the SPAM problem.
I hate sigs.
is evryone gonna do? No more penis enlarment products means bad news for the economy...they will now have to advertise trogh illigal channels...it's like prohibition all over again.. (Disclaimer: Im kidding for those with a bad sense of humor)
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.