Businesses Try to Gut Junk Fax Ban

An anonymous reader writes "The Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits junk faxes without first obtaining consent of the recipient but EPIC is reporting a bill is being proposed by congressman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to allow junk faxes that are now prohibited and to undo new rules that go into effect January 2005 that would have further tightened the junk fax ban. In keeping with congressional truth in naming rules, this bill that will allow more junk faxes is understandably titled 'The Junk Fax Elimination Act of 2004.' There will be a hearing Tuesday in the Telecommunications and Internet subcommittee. I'll be faxing my concerns and opposition to this bill to Mr. Upton and the Committee several times today."

Comments

to save you the time of googling...

[shrubya]

From http://www.house.gov/upton/contact.htm :

If you are sending mail to the Washington office, please fax your correspondence to (202) 225-4986. If you prefer, you may mail your correspondence to either District office and your mail will be forwarded to Washington.

Kalamazoo Office
157 South Kalamazoo Mall
Suite 180
Kalamazoo, MI 49006
(269) 385-0039
(269) 385-2888 fax

St. Joseph Office
800 Ship Street
Suite 106
St. Joseph, MI 49085
(269) 982-1986
(269) 982-0237 fax

Washington D.C. Office
2161 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3761
(202) 225-4986 fax

Re:to save you the time of googling...

[shrubya]

And from http://energycommerce.house.gov/107/feedback.htm :

The Committee on Energy and Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2927
The Committee does not have a public fax number.

*****

FWIW, the action is at http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/subcommittees/ Telecommunications_and_the_Internet_Action.htm

Why legislate?

[philntc]

If there is was ever a problem that can be solved through technology and not legislation this would be the one. (As opposed to the madness involved in technologies to "enforce" DRM).

How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders? There must be some solutions for this out there.

Re:Why legislate?

[greenhide]

How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders?

Hard. Consider the difficulty that most normal spam filters are now having. If you're not using whitelisting (which sucks), then you will receive spam. There's simply no content or bayesian filter that can possibly recognize all forms of spam.

Now imagine you don't have any keywords at all, just a source phone number, which probably can be spoofed.

The only identifying information for a fax is the sending phone number. And, unlike e-mails, it's hard to recognize a phone number as being a certain sender.

Re:Why legislate?

[lightspawn]

How hard is it to filter calls from junk fax senders? There must be some solutions for this out there.

How can a machine tell the difference between junk fax and a valid fax?

Fax messages don't have email headers. You can't parse the links or check the embedded images.

You can either try to go by the source's phone number (if that information is even available) or try to route all fax traffic through a computer, perform OCR, and then actually print whatever you can't be sure isn't spax (sfam?).

You could even try a distributed approach (again, if you route traffic through a computer) if you're willing to let others know who's faxing you.

Bottom line - filtering isn't easy, and we shouldn't have to resort to it.

Re:Why legislate?

[Pendersempai]

Problem is, the fax was designed to be an appliance. Mostly, that's still the way it's used. So when a junk faxer sends some spam, it gets automatically printed at the recipient's expense.

Imagine how you'd feel if every piece of junk snailmail automatically charged your bank account $.50 for printing costs... and then imagine how much more you'd get if it were free for the sender...

Evil bit anyone?

[MarkGriz]

if (fax_status & JUNK_FAX_BIT)
disconnect();
else
print_fax();

It's titled truthfully, by polithink standards.

[Methlin]

"In keeping with congressional truth in naming rules, this bill that will allow more junk faxes is understandably titled 'The Junk Fax Elimination Act of 2004.'" It eliminates junk faxes by legalizing it, just like CAN-SPAM eliminates spam by legalizing (certain forms of) it. TADA! /sarcasm

Re:It's titled truthfully, by polithink standards.

[Zork the Almighty]

How many people are now waiting for the "Illegal Narcotics Elimination Act of 20xx" ?

A little backwards...

[thelenm]

I'll be faxing my concerns and opposition to this bill to Mr. Upton and the Committee several times today.

... in order to prove the point that your concerns are equivalent to junk?

My solution to junk faxes

[Hamster Lover]

I used to work at an electronics store and we were constantly bombarded by junk faxes. My solution was to enable the access code feature that our fax machine/answering machine was equipped with and I recorded a message with instructions on how to fax and the correct access code. Not all fax machines have this feature, but our Panasonic model did.

It wasn't a perfect solution, but those that regularly wanted to fax us were aware of the code, those that did not obviously were rejected. Our junk fax percentage went from 80-90% to 0% instantly.