Government of Canada's Anti-Spam Initiative

FlyingOrca writes "Canada's minister for industry has announced 'a new partnership between government, the private sector and consumers' to combat spam. Light on specifics, but at least they seem to recognize the problem and want to do something about it. Here's the text of the minister's speech. Cue ISO Anti-Spam Proposal Response Form Letter in 5...4...3..."

Comments

A great step,

[hattmoward]

but I didn't get that punchline. Someone care to fill me in?

I just think they should make laws that allow citizens to murder and/or seriously injure known spammers. ;)

Re:A great step,

[Anonymous Coward]

*** FLAME FORM ***

Dear:
[XX] Clueless Newbie
[ ] Lamer
[ ] AOLer
[ ] "Me too" er
[ ] Pervert
[ ] Geek
[ ] Spammer
[ ] Nerd

You Are Being Flamed Because:

[ ] You continued a long, stupid thread
[ ] You started an off-topic thread
[ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message
[ ] You posted a blatently obvious troll
[ ] You posted pretending to be someone famous (See "troll" above)
[ ] You replied to the above message type believing it was actually someone famous
[ ] You said "me too" to something
[XX] You didn't do anything specific, but appear to be so generally worthless that you are being flamed anyway

To Repent, You Must:

[XX] Read any story on /. looking for the form about why it won't work.
[ ] Give up your AOL account
[ ] Tell your Mommy you've been a bad boy
[ ] Jump into a bathtub while holding your monitor
[ ] Actually post something relevant

In Closing, I'd Like to Say:

[ ] Blow me
[ ] Get a life
[ ] Never post again
[ ] I pity your dog
[ ] Go to hell
[ ] All of the above
[XX] Just kidding. :)

**END FLAME**

Re:A great step,

[Jerf]

I think the author is referring to this spam solution checklist. While funny, it is also true; I've never used that list and wanted to add anything to it, or wished there was an "other" checkbox. It's pretty complete, and to date, nothing passes the checklist...

...including, of course, the current email system on a number of counts, but there is something to the old "The Devil you know is better then the one you don't." when dealing with a system involving reputations. At least right now, the fact that just because an email is labelled as coming from "Santa Claus" doesn't mean that it did is preventing people from having their reputations damaged by spam sent out with their name. I was recently "Joe Jobbed" and I was not looking forward to having to explain that my domain wasn't really a spammer's domain... I didn't have to, not to a single person. At least the current mail system is a known quantity.

Re:A great step,

[bentfork]

based on the comments in the SpamSolution Form Letter I think this could work.

The Minister was the first to talk about spam in a sane manner. They acknowledge that it is a very difficult problem to solve, and it is going to require international organization and cooperation, AND cooperation of various standards groups and corporations.

The best part of the speach was, lets think about this, try some things get together in a year and see if anything worked. He didn't say here is My Bill, this will stomp out spam once and for all. He said we are all in this together...

The punchline explained...

[blorg]

I didn't get that punchline. Someone care to fill me in?

Just Google for "Your idea will not work. Here is why" site:slashdot.org. Frankly I'm surprised it only gets 5 results on slashdot.

strikeout OR and reverse the order

[lynx_user_abroad]

...make laws that allow citizens to murder and/or seriously injure known spammers.

If someone is going to go to the trouble of seriously injuring a spammer, might just as well mandate that they go the final measure, no?

Any why exactly are we limiting retribution to citizens only?

Damn. Legislation is as hard as coding sometimes...

Oh, I almost forgot: ;-)

Minister floated idea of international treaty...

[blorg]

As the poster mentioned, there wasn't much detail in that speech.

Computerworld and CNet have (slightly) more information, suggesting that the minister was floating the idea of an international treaty to combat spam.

PGP S/MIME

[aminorex]

I've never recieved a spam email that was
encrypted. There's your solution.

How to fix the spam problem in Canada

[MainframeKiller]

Make legislation requiring all spam to be written in the country's two official languages: English and French!

Or is that beer and poutine? ;-)

here's the actual plan

[rakerman]

An Anti-Spam Action Plan for Canada

Jaded response warning.

[Stephen Samuel]

First of all: This is an election year. Wonderful promises of a vague solution sometime in the future aren't going to do much.

I would also note that The Lubicon Indians were promised a solution to their problem (no land deal) about a century ago. They still haven't gotten a solution. Every election, the new government promises a fast solution to the problem. The next election we get the same promise from the new government.

The proof of this one is in the pudding, and there's nothing on the table yet.

Sigh

[JediTrainer]

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
( ) 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
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) 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
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) 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
(X) 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
(X) 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!