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?"

Comments

It needs to be a standard label for filters

[Jason Straight]

without being a standard label of some kind it'll be useless, I need to be able to keep my kids from seeing it, like being labeled SEXUALLY EXPLICIT is going to keep my 14 yr old from clicking it.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[ITman75]

You can have rules or even blockers that will look for this key word of Sexual Explicit and have it rejected.

I think having this warning will be great. Just have a rule or filter looking for this in the subject line and then it rejects or auto delete it.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[LanceTaylor]

If it was labelled with SEXUALLY EXPLICIT then it would be easy to setup a spam filter that would never let your 14 year old ever see it.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[Jason Straight]

Come to think of it - I'd be happy if they passed a law that said they aren't allow to misspell :)

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[AKnightCowboy]

without being a standard label of some kind it'll be useless

Well that would've been a better idea. Just force spammers via the law to label all their spam in the subject line with a common word like "[UBE]" or "[ADULT]". Then let the READER decide whether they want to filter that stuff easily or not. The problem is, of course, that spammers don't obey the laws anyway and couldn't care less whether you really want to receive their crap so they'd ignore such requirements. If spammers played fair and clearly labeled their crap I would stop complaining because then I could just filter advertisements that I'm not interested in. It'll never happen though.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[Zocalo]

You jest, but I'm fully expecting to see a variety of creative spellings of "sexually explicit" as spammers pretend to comply with the law while still trying to slip by filters. There's five candidates in there for simple !/1/i/I/l/| substitutions alone... Unless the spammer is also responsible for checking the spelling, and liable if it's in error, then this is not going to be as effective as it might, and even if they are liable, I'm betting adoption isn't going to be stellar.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[dipipanone]

Well that would've been a better idea. Just force spammers via the law to label all their spam in the subject line with a common word like "[UBE]" or "[ADULT]".

I've got a better idea yet. Force all the spammers to label all their spam [SPAM] and we're all set.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[AndroidCat]

By the time the spam gets to the reader, it's already eaten bandwidth and storage along the way. If labelling their spam made it quasi-legal, the spam flood would be like a drink from the firehose compared to now (as bad as it is). Look at the figures large ISPs are publishing for the percentage of their total email that is spam, and growing amount of it.

Filters are great for the end user, but eventually we're going to run out of carpets to sweep the spam under. Labelling is not "playing fair".

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[Steve B]

I'd be happy if they passed a law that said they aren't allow to misspell

Actually, what is needed is a clarification of existing computer-cracking law to the effect that any identifiable attempt to circumvent spam filtering is an illegal intrusion just like any other attempt to get into somebody else's computer without permission. The existing penalties for cracking are high enough to serve as a deterrent once a few high-profile scalps have been collected.

The spammer claims that "v1agr4" is just an innocent typo and not an attempt to get through filters? Tell it to the judge and see if he buys it.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[gauauu]

Nah.

If ISPs can succesfully filter spam, users will stop getting spam. If nobody receives spam, nobody will respond and purchase from the spam. Thus there will be no money to be made off spam. Thus there will be no more spam.

Sure, until that whole effect trickles through the system, there will be plenty of spam hitting the ISPs. But eventually the market will dry up.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[smithmc]

I agree 100%. This would make it much easier to skip over all those annoying emails from friends and jump straight to the pr0n.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[espo812]

Actually, what is needed is a clarification of existing computer-cracking law to the effect that any identifiable attempt to circumvent spam filtering is an illegal intrusion just like any other attempt to get into somebody else's computer without permission.

If you're running an SMTP server open to receive mail, you probably want people to send mail to you - which means you are giving them permission to access your system. If you're not running the server, someone is - and they want people to access their system (for the purposes of sending e-mail.)

This is the same concept as leaving telnet and the guest account avliable or anon ftp: clearly, you want random people to access your system (or at least you didn't take any effort to prvent them from doing such). However, I have heard of cases of people being prosecuted for doing just that. I've also heard of cases that if a banner says "welcome" at all this somehow makes it a public system and open to attack (after all, the owner is welcomming you onto the system!)

We don't need new laws - we need better technology. SMTP is admittedly broken. There are ways to fix it.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[martyros]

That's not really that hard... all the law needs to say is "It must be labelled 'SEXUALLY EXPLICIT'." If they label it '5EXUALLY EXPLICIT', well, they haven't complied with the law, now have they?

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[budgenator]

I doubt that most Viagra spams would fall into a sexualy expicit catagory, the sex is implied. Additional anyone sell prescription drugs without a prescription, isn't going to worry about this silly new law, because they were not worried about the old laws.

If you want viagra, just ask your MD, unless it's contra-indicated for you, he'll be glad to get you into the office on a regular basis for script re-fills.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[Steve B]

If you're running an SMTP server open to receive mail, you probably want people to send mail to you

If you are running a spam filter, you obviously do not want people to send spam to you. If someone sends you spam anyway, and does so in a manner that proves beyond reasonable doubt an intent to circumvent spam filtering (e.g. forged headers, alteration of filter-trigger words, misleading subject lines), he's trespassing.

I'm perfectly willing to allow someone to send spam, provided that it includes no features that can be identified as deliberate attempts to evade filtering. (As I said in the first message, the gray area of that criterion, like the unavoidable gray areas in many other laws, can be thrashed out in court on a case-by-case basis.) With that property-rights protection in place, it becomes a matter of free speech for the spammer and for the (few) people who would actually receive his spewings.

We don't need new laws - we need better technology.

We need both, just as we need both locks and police to secure physical property.

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[ultranova]

If you're running an SMTP server open to receive mail, you probably want people to send mail to you - which means you are giving them permission to access your system. If you're not running the server, someone is - and they want people to access their system (for the purposes of sending e-mail.)

This is the same concept as leaving telnet and the guest account avliable or anon ftp: clearly, you want random people to access your system (or at least you didn't take any effort to prvent them from doing such).

Um, he did take effort to prevent spammers from sending him e-mail. Namely, he ran the spam filter. If he wasn't running the spam filter, then he wouldn't care if incoming spam was trying to circumvent it, now would he ?

It's like running SSH with no guest accounts. You want only certain people to have access. You have taken steps to ensure this. Sure, the SMTP server will accept the mail, just as the SSH server will accept an incoming connection; the authorization is done once the connection/e-mail has been accepted. And the spam-filter-circumventing spam is just like a script kiddie trying to use some new exploit in sshd to gain access, and should be just as illegal.

We don't need new laws - we need better technology. SMTP is admittedly broken. There are ways to fix it.

SMTP works fine. What we need is to start encrypting all e-mail with public-key encryption, and discarding all nonecrypted mail. This will make mass-mailing impossible, because each email will need to be encrypted separately for each receiver (mailig lists will be whitelisted by subscribers, of course).

There is no way a protocol can ever tell spam from legitimate mail, unless we implement the evil bit ;).

Re:It needs to be a standard label for filters

[Bluesman]

Except the ACLU will take the law to the Supreme Court since it's discriminating against people who can't spell.

Place your right hand...

[akaina]

... on this issue of Playboy. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you Hef?

Finally

[MrWim]

I'll be able to get the computer to select the spam I want to see from the spam I don't

Spam

[Ckwop]

Newsflash..

1.) Spammers don't obey the rule of law..
2.) Spammers can go offshore.

The way to deal with spam is to make it so it doesn't pay. Remember the illegal broadcast stations? The way we (in the UK) managed to shut them down was by making it *illegal* to advertise on them.

Do the same to spam and throw in a host of technical measures and we might be able to bring it under control

Re:Spam

[DrKayBee]

Besides look at how hard they try to spoof mail filters. I doubt if they are going to get scared by this law. Already we arre seeing spam with a mixture of words in it that doesn't trip the mail filters. I don't think the answer is in red-tape.

Re:Spam

[iammrjvo]

I'm with you on this, but I thought of something interesting. If you made it illegal to advertise with illegal spam, then couldn't spammers extort money from legitimate businesses by threatening to advertise on their behalf?

It's an odd twist, but nothing like this is below the spammers.

Yes, the business would probably eventually prevail in a court of law, especially if they could prove that they were the victim of an extortion attempt, but the hassle would be expensive in and of itself.

Re:Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the US?

Requiring a warning in spam mail is clearly a away of explicitly ALLOWING spam.

Re:Spam

[Shalda]

Actually, about 10% of the spam I receive is marked with ADV:. This indicates to me that about 10% of spammers make an effort to stay just this side of the law. And I thank them; may SPAM filters have never failed to pick up any that are tagged as such.

But you are right about a few things. The feds need to start going after the spammers (and those that advertise with them - conspiracy charges?) that they can get. Also, state AGs need to start targeting offenders for violating state and lcoal obscenity laws. If you can't put it on a billboard on mainstreet, it shouldn't be in unsolicited email. Doubly so if the account is held by a kid.

And finally, obviously, we all need to move to an email system that isn't so fundamentally flawed.

Re:Spam

[Sethseekstruth]

Seriously---why not have a legal definition of spam, then go after those that reap the benefits of spam...spammers are in it for the money and if it does not pay they would not do it. And , it might be hard to track spammers but by it's very nature the "spam sponsor" is trackable, usually via the web address. are there any legal issues that would stand in the way of blocking access to a site that sponsors spam? Although, I guess some would could pay a spammer to "promote" Bush2004.com and knock it off the net....any ideas to stop that?

And in further news...

[heironymouscoward]

The International Federation of Spammers and Spyware Merchants announced that they planned to fully cooperate with all US federal regulations covering the transmission of unsolicited messages by email.

IFSS president Biggus R. Dickus said, "we are a responsible, family-oriented group of businessmen. Anyone who says otherwise can come and complain personally."

The FCC announced itself "very pleased" with the comments from the IFSS.

Re:And in further news...

[prash_n_rao]

I think they yould prefer it if you e-mail your complaints to them. This is for your own convenience... no more waiting in long queues to complain: just drop an e-mail.

They also encourage mass petitions by e-mail. You write a small e-mail with the complaints, forward it to your friends with a cc to IFSS (or even just your favoirite spammer), ask your friends to do the same.

The more people you forward to, the faster IFSS will respond.

What defines sexually explicit

[millahtime]

What defines sexually explicit?? There are some cases where it is obvious and some where it is iffy. Isn't it like sexual harrassment and in the eye of the beholder. Or would they use a rating system like movies??

Re:What defines sexually explicit

[Trigun]

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be explaining to my kids "Son, those are called breasts" instead of "No, most women can't fit a two-litre pop bottle in there, they don't like other women, and they definitely do not like animals in that way"

Re:What defines sexually explicit

[iammrjvo]

What defines sexually explicit??

"I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it."

Seriously, though. If any reasonable person on a jury in a court of law thinks that it's sexually explicit, then that's good enough.

Re:uh?!

[Raven42rac]

It is meant to be redundant. Redundancy and sarcasm come across better spoken than written.

same thing as XXX?

[esarjeant]

Isn't this just going to enable an industry to profit from the stygma of being "sexually explicit"?

This is the same thing that Rated X did for the adult movie industry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm relieved to see something finally being done about this but I think a stronger message should have been sent. Simply put, the email is unsolicited which means the recipient has no way to prevent the mail from arriving. Do you honestly think that curious teenagers who receive a sexually explicit content email (and it's labeled as such) aren't going to take a gander at it?

For that matter, I don't want my 10 year old having to sift through this stuff either. Sure, spam filters can do excellent work now but it's still not 100%.

Re:same thing as XXX?

[djmurdoch]

Simply put, the email is unsolicited which means the recipient has no way to prevent the mail from arriving.

??? That's what filters are for.

Do you honestly think that curious teenagers who receive a sexually explicit content email (and it's labeled as such) aren't going to take a gander at it?

If they're your children and you don't want them to look at such stuff, install filters.

For that matter, I don't want my 10 year old having to sift through this stuff either. Sure, spam filters can do excellent work now but it's still not 100%.

That's the point of this regulation. If the subject line says "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT", then even the crappiest filter is going to be able to filter it.

Sure, spammers will probably ignore this regulation, but then you're no worse off than under the current situation, and maybe better: the spammers are clearly violating the law. You'll just need to track them down and convince someone to prosecute them.

Re:same thing as XXX?

[radja]

>the spammers are clearly violating the law.

not necessarily. a foreign spammer is not bound by US law, and doesn't have to label spam.

SÉXÚALL 3XPL1C1T C0NTÊÑT

[heironymouscoward]

The rules say the subject must be in ASCII. They should have said "7-bit US-ASCII". Still, it's probably a non-starter. I can't see a single spammer complying with this.

For one thing, simple Darwinian competition means that spammers who comply will be at a disadvantage to those who do not, and will thus be eliminated.

Regulation does not prevent crime, it just moves it elsewhere. Crime - like spamming - must be prevented by making it uneconomical.

It should be a federal crime to _advertise_ via spammers, via spyware, and via trojans under the basic regulation covering consumer rights. Hitting the advertisers rather than the spammers would have a much greater impact.

Re:SÉXÚALL 3XPL1C1T C0NTÊÑT

[howlatthemoon]

So if I want to hurt my competition, I hire a spammer to send messages related to my competitors' products. They get fined into the stone age and I win. The work it would take to figure out who actually is paying for the ads would be tremendous, I wonder if it ever could be enforced.

Short Answer...

[shadowcabbit]

Anyway, I wonder if it will work?

No.

The spammers don't care about the laws of the U.S. when they can just spoof the headers into thinking they came from outside the U.S.; and the U.S., despite whatever delusions my duly elected officials may be believing right now, can't enforce something like this on spam originating outside the States.

An issue like spam-- or any 'regulation' of the internet-- cannot be done piecemeal, on a country-by-country basis. Internet laws, in order to be effective, must be issued, interpreted, and enforced by an international body; otherwise the offender can simply research the laws of other countries and find somewhere where his action is either implicitly legal or not explicitly illegal. The U.N. does not count in this regard, as it was not created to be an international police agency. Either a new agency must be created, an existing group like Interpol must take responsibility, or the world needs to collectively shut up and take it.

Re:Short Answer...

[Eric Savage]

"The spammers don't care about the laws of the U.S. when they can just spoof the headers into thinking they came from outside the U.S.; and the U.S., despite whatever delusions my duly elected officials may be believing right now, can't enforce something like this on spam originating outside the States."

If the spammer is in America (as the vast majority supposedly are), then the email originates with them, even if the first mail server exists elsewhere. The reason people spam is because it's easy, I doubt any of them are going to move to another country just to be able to continue legally.

Let's say that most spam did move offshore, it becomes that much easier to identify through rules and such. If a particular country becomes a haven for them, and they get blocked wholesale, that country will likely take action as well lest they lose their legitimate businesses.

Also as some other people noted, they find spammers find following the money, and it's going to be hard for a spammer to claim they don't know where that came from.

Not good IMO

[WanderingGhost]

I don't like that. Anything that says "It's OK to send SPAM, so long as..." sounds bad to me. It's some kind of positive reinforcement to spammers... But maybe I'm not flexible enough? I just think I shouldn't be forced to use my bandwidth and CPU time to get a message and check that it's SPAM, even if "it's always tagged as such".

Another Waste of time

[patrick24601]

As we so often see spammers have no morals, ethics or are even interested in paying the slightest attention to the law. To me this is another example of a law making body making a new law to make themselves and the techingnorant feel good. This is a complete waste of joe taxpayers (i.e. MY) money.

Stolen sig below:
Karma: Chameleon. Comes and goes.

standard /. answer, for your enjoyment

[cascadingstylesheet]

Anyway, I wonder if it will work?

No way! No law or regulation ever works, nor any solution that doesn't involve Perl.

And you can trust my /. certified predictions - as you know, we've had 15 more 9/11 incidents, and no terrorist has ever been caught, because they all use PGP, and are impossible to monitor or stop ;)

Hear that sound?

[thewiz]

It's the spammers laughing their a$$e$ off.

Until one or more of them are caught and fined HEAVILY or get thrown in jail where they get to be someone's hot, tasty biotch, they will continue to spray their garbage all over the net.

Legislating that someone has to do something is meaningless unless there is enforcement.

Oh, yeah!

[Pig Hogger]

And we know how criminal spammers are good at following the law...

Hopefully

[X-Nc]

It's become so difficult to find the porn spam burried under all the rest. If this gets done it'll really help me in finding the only spam worth reading.

(Yes, I'm being faces... fecaci... feseecious... ah hell, you know what I mean)

Re:sexuall explicit content

[anticypher]

I can't see a single spammer complying with this.

That is what we want. We want laws they can, and most likely will, break. Then throw them in front of the court facing 200 million counts of breaking this law. Watch the spammer plea bargain a short, 1 or 2 year prison sentence when faced with a possible 700 year sentence.

The U-CAN-SPAM act may have been a watered down compromise, but there is already action being taken against the worst spammers. They might be able to hide their IP address by using trojan nets, but the authorities are finding them by following the money trail, not the electronic trail.

With Asscroft in charge of the New Morality in the U.S., expect to see him going after all those Nasty Pornagraphers the day after this rule goes into effect. You can bet the DoJ already has files ready to go, just waiting for a new rule so they can establish heavier charges. The worst pr0n spammers will end up in jail, and that will be a warning to the others.

the AC

They already do...

[oberondarksoul]

It's just most of the porn spam is labelled as 'P.()R_|\|' or the like...

Doesn't matter what law

[Himring]

I wonder if it will work?

They never did stop truckers from using profanity over CB radios regardless of FCC regulations....

If a law is not enforceable, then it just don't matter....

Re:Doesn't matter what law

[mdfst13]

Truckers don't send out an identification number (IP number) every time they talk over the radio. Also, there is no way to prevent truckers from talking over a CB if they fake their identity (SPF: http://spf.pobox.com ).

When I was driving a tow truck, there was an incident where one of the dispatchers was worried that he would get fined for swearing. Fortunately, it turned out that he cut off the transmission in time. However, if it had gone through, he (or AAA) could have been fined. Unlike a trucker, he was identifiable and broadcasting from a defined place.

Same thing with television and radio, they keep the language within the guidelines because they can be prosecuted, fined, and/or suspended.

Open proxies and off shoring are more of a worry, but if they are selling in the US, some part of the transaction must take place in the US. That can be detected (they have to tell people how in the email or someplace accessible from the email) and blocked.

Re:sexuall explicit content

[garcia]

We do? We want more government controls? Wow. Not from where I am standing...

We are so worried about spam that we are going to through everything out the window to stop it. The more and more you let the government take over the more and more YOU will also lose in the future.

This law is, again, very narrow. They will get around it. Our laws do not protect what they can do from overseas, with spam relay bots (hijacked, for hire, or otherwise), and with ficticious names (which, BTW, laws concerning the DNS records are worthless).

So, let's follow 9/11's lead everywhere and stamp out these criminals at the cost of our own liberties.

Nice.

It'll never work

[CaptainBaz]

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
( ) 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
( ) 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
(X) 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:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) 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!

[SPAM] cooperation, can't be that hard.

[Allen Zadr]

Absolutely! Really it'll work. All we need to do is get all of these legitimate electronic marketing firms to cooperate with this plan.

Since they are legitimate electronic marketing firms, they will have no problem cooperating.

Anybody know the postal address of any of these legitimate electronic marketing firms so we can ask them nicely to cooperate?

...What do you mean you can't figure out what legitimate electronic marketing firm sent you that E-mail? Yeah, the one with the subject line of, "Bset P@R!N0 sevirice axldirlx". Yeah, just look at the header. Do a lookup for the IP address in the received line... See, it resolves to 'ftc.gov' - funny I didn't know the FTC was in the Email marketing business, Hmph - we'll just ask them to label their Emails...
Problem solved

What are you saying. Of course the FTC sent it, the E-mail headers wouldn't lie. That's been illegal since January 1, 2004. Surely, you don't expect me to believe that these legitimate electronic marketing firms are breaking the law!

Analogous to a partial-birth abortion law

[Anonymous Coward]

The religious right kooks are paving the way - just as their tool John Ashcroft has been promising and proclaiming for 4 years now - for an assault on pornography in general, and especially on the internet.

Spam is an issue that made it to government because it's a tech issue that everyone can understand on the face of it. And on the face of it everyone opposes it. Much like "war on drugs" or "war on copying" it provides an Evil Target for everyone to rally against that can never fully or truly be banished, and as such can be used as a long-term vehicle for pork projects of even the slightest relevance.

Mark my worthless anonymous words, seemingly-innocuous laws like this will be used as the framework for net anti-porn bills in the near future. Remember, the "innocuous" NET Act Clinton signed into law? Its "only purpose" was to "close a loophole". It yielded the DMCA in half a decade.

Did anyone notice any effect on CAN-SPAM before?

[WalterSobchak]

I certainly did not notice that CAN-SPAM became effective 1/1/04. Or actually, my filters are still filtering out a very similar number of messages.
Does anyone have information of some kind, if legislators think that this law actually worked?

As much as I would love to see spammers prosecuted, I doubt CAN-SPAM has done anything to reduce spam.

Alex

Re:sexuall explicit content

[Steve B]

We want more government controls?

No. We want the existing legitimate government controls (i.e. "Don't steal services. If you do we will throw you in jail.") to be enforced.

MOD PARENT UP

[dcocos]

http://www.theocracywatch.org/

hypothesis

[moviepig.com]

Immunologically...

Suppose a new filter/protocol/etc. were developed which instantly blocked 99.9% of spammers. Might the inevitable remaining few become somehow particularly "lethal", e.g., to a then more credulous public?

(Sure, bandwidth would be conserved. But doesn't Moore's Law render bandwidth an eventual non-issue?)

war on spam

[olscratch69]

Now that the federal government is getting tough on spam how much longer before the is a "war" on spam. This war on spam is brought to you by the same people that brought you the war on drugs and the war on poverty, so don't get your hopes up. I would rather the government kept the filthy little hands off the internet and email. I know that there are alot of people that hate spam but I hate television comercials a hell of a lot more then spam. I can't remember a time when the federal or my local government got involved in something and it turned out for the better. The less the government intrudes in our lives the better.

Here we go again ...

[Mr_Silver]

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!

Oh, thank god

[kneecarrot]

They need to do something. My penis is getting so long I can hardly walk.

PICS labels?

[Fastolfe]

Why advocate a plain-text arbitrary (english) label at all? Why not use PICS labels for mass e-mail? If you're going to legislate labelling of some kind, at least do it in a flexible, extensible fashion.

Maybe I do want to receive sexually-explicit spam, just not too explicit. I'd like to tune my spam filters to suit that requirement, not along an arbitrary government-specified line.

What qualifies as sexual?

[phorm]

Thinking of some of the spam I've seen:

"Jane and her barn animals" - Illegal whether it has a disclaimer or not

"Jane does six guys" - sexual

"Jane's webcam" - sexual, but does it count if they manage to keep the email content itself down to 'innuendo' status (and the actual crappy pr0n being on a linked page).

"Enlarge your breasts/penis/etc. Viagara alternative, etc etc" - probably the greatest in volume of spam in contrast to the above, but does it qualify as sexual? Female/male enhancement tends to deal with sexual organs/performance but is not actually pornographic in content.


Really, it seems to me that the really nasty stuff is already illegal anyways (animals, underage, etc), and the majority of emails I get to my servers are in the nature of enhancements which may or may not count.

greylisting + spamtrap RBL == works

[RonBurk]

I recently did my first little test of greylisting + spamtrap RBL. This is where you tempfail any email you have any suspicions of for about, say, an hour, to see if the (suspected) spammer will, in that length of time, transmit something to a known spamtrap mail address. For my test, I accepted all mail so I could look through each one to check for false positives.

The result was: only about 2% of the spam would have gotten through. I think I can improve that rate by increasing my local spamtrap database to augment the larger one at cbl.absuseat.org. But even if I can't: 98% of spam eliminated in a 100% automated fashion, no tuning and tweaking and training. Completely automated spam removal, totally driven by the spammers themselves (they tell us what IP addresses they are using today by using them to send spam to a spamtrap address).

Greylisting + spamtrap RBL has some niggling problems, such as dealing with mailing lists that use a different sender address (and maybe even IP address) when they retry a tempfailed message. However, these problems seem manageable compared with solutions such as teaching every user to train a Bayesian filter.

To defeat greylisting + spamtrap RBL, spammers will have to locate all the spamtrap addresses in their databases and remove them. Good luck!

Greylisting + spamtrap RBL may not be a silver bullet, but it sure acts like one on my system.

It's actually "sexually oriented"...

[fmaxwell]

Seriously, though. If any reasonable person on a jury in a court of law thinks that it's sexually explicit, then that's good enough.

Don't you think we should at least require a majority of them? By the way, the FTC requires the label "[SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT]" on all e-mail which is "sexually oriented."

The problem with this kind of law is the significant risk of the law being thrown out as being too vague. If someone is tried under that law in Salt Lake City, "sexually oriented" might be interpreted to mean a picture of a woman wearing a skirt that doesn't cover her knees. A Los Angeles jury might decide that "sexually oriented" is nothing short of photos of full penetration. Is a text ad for a site that sells lingerie "sexually oriented"? How about an ad with photos of women in bikinis to advertise www.ladies-swimwear.com? Is that "sexually oriented" or is it a site about beachwear fashion?

It's not the government's role to decide what is, or is not, sexually oriented. They should simply make sending spam, or paying a third party to send spam, illegal. They should pass a law like Virginia's, which entitles a recipient to damages from the spammer if they win in a civil suit. They should require that ISPs investigate spam and take action within 48 hours of receiving notification, reporting back to those who filed the complaints about what, specifically, was done, and whether they know the identity of the spammer (so that people decide whether it's worthwhile to get a court order to sue the spammer). They should shut down the connections of those who send spam (I don't care if it's someone's moronic relative who clicked on an attached virus that turned their system into a spam relay).

Spam is theft. Period. It is theft of bandwidth, theft of storage, and theft of CPU time. It's not a free speech issue. It's not analogous to physical junk mail. It's not like telemarketing. Laws can be effective whether spam is sent from with within the US or offshore. If you disagree with me, then go here and read so that you don't waste your time and ours with old, tired, discredited arguments.