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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?"
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.
... on this issue of Playboy. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you Hef?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
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
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??
Evolution or ID?
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%.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
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".
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.
"Action is the thing that escapes most people. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. Great actions are few and far in between.
(Yes, I'm being faces... fecaci... feseecious... ah hell, you know what I mean)
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
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....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
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!
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?
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!
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
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.
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.
This is not my sig.