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UN Takes Aim At Spam Epidemic
clester writes "CNN reports 'The United Nations is aiming to bring a "modern day epidemic" of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers, a leading expert said Tuesday.' The full story reports that as much as 85 percent of all e-mail may be categorized as spam and that the problem is rapidly spreading to cell phones in the form of text messages..."
How much will legislation actually do though?
Until a method is found that kills or significantly makes spam nearly impossible to send or makes the profits significantly less than the costs of operating, all legislation will do is drive the spammers further and further underground...
be stopping real travesties like war and disease?
...the UN won't be able to do anything about spam. As hard as they try, the war against spam will not be won with legislation. As more legislation comes around, the spammers move to countries where nobody cares about the legislation and it all starts again.
The war against spam will be won by smart filters!!
Oh jesus h. christ, NOW I feel better that the UN is involved. I am sure the spammers are cowering in fear right now. I am sure after a year of debate, the security council will pass a resolution (9-6) that says spam is bad, but only after concessions are made regarding human rights to enough countries to get the full 9 votes....
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
...They'll pass a resolution against spam and that's the last we'll hear of it.
-R
Intergovernmental cooperation in regulating the Internet is a recipe for disaster. An effective set of world-wide anti-spam policies will simply be a precedent that the US Congress can point to when pushing even more invasive laws like the DMCA. Or, to be fair, the rest of the world can use it as a precedent for pushing their ridiculous censorship rules.
I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I just don't think we need a new set of laws to deal with every little annoyance, and I'd rather see the Internet be as unregulated as possible. Instead of pushing our leaders to pass more unenforcable laws that will expand government regulatory power, let's go after ISPs (and entire national networks, if need be) that tolerate spammers. If the Internet can't be self-regulating, it's ultimately doomed to failure or Balkanization.
1984, read it and wheap...si-fi foreshadowing life.
the Iraq had no WMD, so the UN resolutions have been ensured and adhered.
Once the last resisting country (USA) adheres to the UN resolutions as well I think there's a good chance for this to work as well.
A) The UN doesn't get it (they never do)
B) The spammers themselves will be on this panel (ie: Sudan being on the Human Rights board)
C) The few non-spammers on this panel will have no idea what spam is. They'll be more interested in joining the mindless anti-Isreal propaganda the UN loves to engage in (Somehow anti-Isreali spam will be allowed by the UN, just watch it)
D) This panel will report to another panel, which in turn will report to some other panel, and thereby getting nothing done (their website has an amusing pic about just this)
E) Even if this panel wanted to get something done, there would be much infighting and mindless bickering between a bunch of guys who continue to treat the UN as the mindless boys-club it has grown to be
Sunny Dubey
Yes, cause who would listen to a part of the UN that is pushing this? the silly ITU.(International Telecommunications Union). These are the guys pushed the standards for telephones, like dialing internationally, and equipment working together.. Bet your local telecom and cell companies all followed the ITU's mandate to the letter, or else they wouldn't interconnect with the rest of the world.. Which is a pretty good idea, if you ask me.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
That doesn't mean that nothing can be done... I and everyone else with a firewall in front of a mailserver can blackhole those nations that choose to tolerate spam.
I can't wait for IPv6... It should be even easier to throw away traffic from entire nations than it is now.
Is to punish the ones that hire spammers and spammers themself.
Everybody can read who's advert it is and where the owner of the advert resides.
I'll assume not because you've jumped on the mass-media hyped lack of huge stockpiles of WMD and come to the conclusion that Iraq was in compliance with all 18 or 19 UN resolutions.
Saddam's Iraq was chock full of illegal rockets, weapons research programs, and had never stopped shooting at UN forces enforcing the no-fly zones.
And if Saddam didn't have stockpiles of WMD when the US and about 20 or 30 other countries invaded, that meant he failed to comply with the UN resolutions that required him to account for the stockpiles he certainly had during the Iran war and the first Gulf War - when we did find them.
The fact that Saddam used the Money for Food program to subvert and corrupt the UN (and other countries...) is just evidence to stay far, far away from them when importand things are on the line. Just like Bill Clinton did when he opted to stop the genocide in Bosnia - another non-UN invasion by the US.
The problem with paying for the certificate is that then all e-mail certificates are controlled by a central authority. Also, there is no way that the encryption scheme used for the encryption could be open, as if it was, then why pay for the certificate? Good plan, but I don't see how it would work.
thisnukes4u.net
Ya there going to control spam. They can't even keep
one country from invading another or enforce the 1945 Geneva Convention. If they try to control spam instead of 80 percent of all email being spam, it will be 99.9 percent.
Email savvy people can't come up with a palatable solution. Most non-tech savvy have solutions that throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I imagine the great minds who make up the UN will support the idea that generates the most money for the lobbists of thier supporting country. So it looks like we are going to get a sender-pays-Microsoft or sender-pays-Verisign antispam solution.
.. take some time and know what you're talking about. Don't dismiss the United Nations because a bunch of right wing idiots on TV like to make it their whipping boy. The UN does a lot of good all around the world. And if anything, the US is more responsible for crippling the UN's effectiveness than anyone else.
dunno.. we haven't had a world war in half a century..
That is not due to the UN but to the arsenal of nukes which backed up the Cold War. It was only the threat of total annihilation that prevented WWIII.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
The goals are great, but quite frankly I'm very concerned about where this could take us. It's scary enough when the U.S. Congress tries to make things better by deciding what can and can't be sent via email--having this decided by an international organization just makes me shudder. Today it's just spam, but what happens when that international organization decides that discussion of terrorist planning can't be conducted via email... and what happens when the definition of "terrorist" starts expanding.
I'm all for getting rid of spam, but we need to watch this very carefully.
standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers
Must have been asleep, but I didn't realize that it was within the power of the UN to 'standardize legislation' in any given juristiction upon the planet.
Bitter sarcasm: This should come as a great relief to the countless vitims of murder, genocide, torture, displacement, starvation, disease, opression and the myriad other insults, which more than half of humanity fears on a regular basis.
What was the mission of the UN? Ladies and gentlemen, get a real job..
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Part of the reason this would be a bad idea is that alot of spam comes from zombie computers.
Why should my Grandma not be able to send email because she doesn't know that her computer is infected? (Not that it is. I'm a good grandson.)
Once the last resisting country (USA) adheres to the UN resolutions as well I think there's a good chance for this to work as well.
There's more than one. I can think of Israel off the top of my head.
ensuring their resolutions are adhered to in places such as Iraq, Palestine, etc,
That "etc" stands for "The USA" and "Israel", right?
Fair & Balanced(tm)!
"by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers."
But doesn't a large portion of spam come from compromised Windows machines with broadband? Although lots of spam comes from Russian and Chinese servers I don't see how the UN's approach will be able to handle desktop computers in the US. If Grandma gets a worm that turn her computer into a spam machine are we going to prosecute her in The Hague?
It required Iraq to account for the weapons, sure. It permitted the use of force should Iraq fail to comply, yes. But who was to judge this?
The UN was to decide if Iraq complied, and according to the inspectors, Iraq was. The US decided Iraq failed and took matters into its own hands, defying the UN and even threatening to endager the UN workers who were still there.
Also, weapons deteriorate. The Iran conflict was when? 1980?
If you were asked to prove you did not possess something, how could you comply? By allowing me to search your property. That is the only way. You cannot prove a negative, but you can prove something cannot be found with reasonable means and time. The UN workers were busy proving that. Sure they were taking a while. It's a big country. Bush was simply eager to get his war on. (A video of him before his solemn announcement demonstrated this.)
So who defied the UN?
I'm so glad that the UN is willing to tackle spam rather than some softball issue like the rampant spread of HIV through low-income nations. Maybe Symantec, Microsoft, and Cisco can work on tackling a small thing like that...
In stead of ostracising countries from communication with email, they should be helped with stopping SPAM traffic from their network and helped back onto the internation email sending stage. If nothing else the UN could at least help with that. Not just punishing a whole country of innocent users with the few bad apples in them.
Again and again we see examples of the thought process that maintaining a blockade against a country will force that country to comply with international demands, and again and again we see years and sometime decades of suffering by citizens before a resolution is actually reached.
I may be sounding like I'm taking this a little out of perspective, but how quickly citizens from the so called developed countries with this attitude would cry out that their freedoms are being stepped upon if someone dared to blacklist them.
...but it will end with censorship of many other things. France and Germany already do not allow the schwastika to be sold or displayed in their respective countries. How ling until they pressure the UN to ban this from the internet? What about China and anti-government speech? Letting the UN get involved will only make things worse. Much, much worse.
...but the UN tends to be generally ignored by lots of countries... especially the US, want an example?
Bush: Hey UN, can we go to Iraq?
UN: No
Bush: Duly noted *promptly invades*
Even if the UN passes this, the US (which originates a good amount of the world's spam, probably won't want to do this, for lots of reasons, one being that the US likes to be unilateral now, and lots of people in congress and the like don't really like the UN, but this might spur the US to do its own plan which actually does stuff
Actually the ITU adopted standards that had previously been established. They just decided to take credit for standards that already existed.
Two possable outcomes.
1. 13 years from now someone other than the UN will get feed up and actually address the problem pissing off the rest of the world who apparently started taking kick backs from spammers.
Slashdotters seam to think this is the outcome however it appears this only happens when the UN takes on it's ACTUAL mission of world peace and not more trivial matters.
(I know spam is a big deal but compaired to world hunger (ignore the obveous joke here) disease and war I'd say spam is kinda the same as a cop ignoring a murder to chase after a speeder)
2. Draconian laws that permit the UN to deside what is or isn't acceptable in e-mail.
With some lobbying and bribes spammers get to continue to operate BUT other things don't.
Spam hunter efforts, Linux dev e-mail lists, Slashdot (all of it), Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern.
The merrits and diffrences between the cenesorship of Limbaugh and censorship of Stern aside the United Nations was founded to premote world peace (hunger and disease intersect this as nations will go to war over the resorces needed to resolve thies issues).
However as of late the United Nations has abandoned it's cause of world peace in favor of it's own form of world domnation.
Take a look at the issues the UN has taken on as of late:
IP law, Hate Speach and now Spam.
Each of thies issues can be used to craft laws that control what people can say.
IP law: Copyright law is itself a big buggabo. It's not so much the control of what is said but WHO may say it. Copyright law has already been used to control political speach.
The "I have a dream" speach should be public domain. It was a public speach and shapes public policy to this very day. However the famaly of the man who originally uttered those words now clame ownership over all his words making political debate on those issues cumbersom or in some cases impossable. IMAO that is the only value to a copyright on public speach.
Hate Speach: Today political organsiations clame all opposing ideology as "hate speach" (much as Microsoft clames Linux is unamerican) as a means of sillencing opponents.
Spam: Spam isn't very well defined and it's pritty easy to use the terminology to pick and chouse what is or isn't spam. This could easly be used to sillence political speach.
I also believe the UN is picking this one up becouse certen political parties are using spam for fundrasing. Obveously even lagit antiSpam laws would have some effect on the political front however thats not really anybodys fault but the spammer politicians themselfs.
I don't actually exist.
why should grandma lose her email "rights"if she gets rooted and zombiefied? for the same reason like someone who fails an emissions test from bad engine maintenace can't get their cars re registered until they fix the problem, because the state-we the people-*say so*, figuring less pollution is a mostly a good idea. Whether grandma knew her car was overly polluting or not. All spam is is internet pollution, enforced minimum "good netiquette" standads just might be a good idea, and nowadays, there's no reason to have a zombied machine except willful ignorance and a general uncaring attitude. everyone has heard of spam and viruses and wehatnot who's on the net now. Every-single-person. If MY machine got zombiefied it wouldn't bother me AT ALL to be temporarily blocked from email, because I certainly would want to know about it. happens to everyone, the potential anyway. It's just how you handle it. If I got one final email from the ISP saying, "well hombre, you are zombiefied, clean up your machine,then we'll let you back to using your email account", I would APPRECIATE the info if I didn't know about it. It's called "tough love", being forced into civilised behavior, whether you knew about the uncivilised behavior or not. Honest righteous people want to be clean and not be unwitting spammers or virus spewers, sometimes they just need to be told about it,at any age.
I like what we said in the 60's, it's still relevant today:
"you are part of the problem, or part of the solution"
Thats because there not using 'real' guns. Put a little .45ACP in the worlds top 10 spammers, and I do believe you'll see a change start to occur.
The UN outlawing spam will work as well as the UN law outlawing genocide.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The joke was not facile US-bashing. As far as disarmament, your country's policies, more than those of any other country, suck. Star Wars... More weapons of mass destruction than any other country and the only country that has used all three... reponsible for proliferation, supporting repressive regimes (remember, Saddam, just like Osama, was YOUR man)...
Feel free to assume I'm just an ill-informed idiot. In the meantime, I'll just assume you're uncomfortable with the fact that your country's policies are despicable, invoking god and forgetting to spell when someone tries to point it out with humour*
*Canadian/Brit spelling. So sue me.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Why go after the spammers? We simply need laws to sue companies who sell their products via spamming services. If companies get sued a lot employing spammers - their business practice won't pay off anymore.
As long as people buy the crap that is advertised and as long as some company can make some decent profit from spamming it will continue.
Destroy the economical basis of spam - then most companies won't use it.
There's a reason why you aren't seeing many suits from individuals. The federal government has seen fit to take the power to sue spammers given to us by our state legislatures. Instead of letting us defend ourselves they passed that ridiculous YOU-CAN-SPAM law. I was looking forward to using my state's anti-spam law. Unfortunately the YOU-CAN-SPAM law went into effect before I had a chance and it doesn't all me, the end user, the person being damaged, to seek legal action. Thanks Uncle Sammy for watching out for my interests. I really appreciate it.
Only within the context of your worldview.
One man's porn is another man's everyday activity. Did you know that there is just about a sexual fetish (and thus a porn market) for just about anything? A well known example are images (and video) of a woman wearing high heels stepping on wine glasses. No nudity, just the act alone.
Some people find this highly erotic, to them images of the act could be considered "pornographic". To the rest of society, it is just "odd". In a similar vein, you have the whole "furry" fetish...
The fact is, one can only tell what porn is based on their world view - in some cultures, the sight of a woman's breasts would arouse little or nothing. Other cultures drape curtains on their statues.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
No country is going to defy the UN to protect spammers. Some might be too corrupt or inept to regulate them effectively, but with laws on the books there is a mechanism to harass them, or institute Internet "sanctions" to make business hard for theose who support them. how, ahem, "effective" the paper tiger that is the UN has been...
The UN's overriding aim was to prevent another World War. It has done so, despite recent actions by a rogue nation which has ignored its processes. It's also done a few other things, like wiping out smallpox (except for those viruses held back by the USA and USSR that now threaten us again).
It's only a commercial activity in the sense that robbing old ladies is a commercial activity. I don't see any problem in restraining that.
So long as there's a free and open system for people to use, there'll be those that abuse it. We must, as a people, ensure that nobody destroys that openness, government, terrorists, or morons, lest our freedom will be gone. That freedom; the freedom that makes the entire thing great.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
What happens when a country is in non-compliance? After sanctions, embargos, and brow-beating don't work, the UN turns to it's muscle, basically the U.S. and European nations military, to drop the hammer. Do we really want to send UN "peacekeepers" into a foreign country to stop someone from sending you e-mail? Anyone here want their nation's military to be a) under command of another nation's general, b) shipped to some far away land, and c) used into battles to protect your right to not have to look at naked breasts when you don't want to? Hell, I don't even want my military in Iraq fighting for someone else's freedom.
Remember, folks, the UN is just a meeting place for nations to come together to talk through their differences. UN resolutions have no more weight of law than any other verbal or written contract, and since those contracts are between nations, I posit they carry less enforcement power than contracts between natural persons. The power they have is in PR - non-complying nations get some real bad press from major news organizations, which brings out the bleeding heart in all of us, I'm sure. If these agreements had any real power, Americans wouldn't be getting killed to free Iraq - and it's oil.
...and you run and you run and you can't stop what's been done...