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CAN-SPAM Is A Bust
Doc Ruby writes "The Congressional chatter about 'canning spam', in the CAN-SPAM law since January, has turned out to really mean 'they can still spam'. TechWeb News reports that 'In July, compliance fell for the first time under one percent to a measly 0.54 percent', from its 3% max. The researchers claim the ball has been dropped by 'law enforcement'. Those police are probably too busy deleting the 80% spam from their email, like everyone else."
I propose they add a vigilante provision that allows anonymous receivers of SPAM to seek out and beat the shit out of anyone found to be sending SPAM.
Well, I for one, am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Slow news day?
Lets look at some quick facts.
1. The can spam law gave you and I (collectively the little people) exactly zero ability to extract anything from a spammer (like money) for damages.
2. The can spam law requires law enforcement to track down spammers. Honestly - does anyone think Johnny Law is going to be going through those mail headers looking for the true source of spam? Lets be honest, the first chinese IP and they quit.
3. This law does not place real world consequences for those breaking "cyber law". (It's supposed to, but the proof is in the pudding!)
4. It does not allow you to complain about spam as a denial of service attack (which it most certainly is!)
Until we start putting spammers in jail, or start forcing them to pay, and pay and pay and pay, you will continue to get spammed. Until then, lets be honest, the community is doing a better job of removing spam than the government is. Thanks NJABL, SORBS, Spam Haus et al.
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
In many US states, it's a criminal offense to operate an anonymous business. California has a specific requirement that a business selling on the Internet must disclose their actual name and address before accepting a credit card number. Few spammers do that. We need to put teeth into that law by making the bank that processes the credit card transaction an accessory to that offense. It's aiding and abbetting money-laundering.
On a state level, make it illegal for a bank to charge a consumer's account for an Internet transaction unless the web site complies with that requirement. That would work as a state law, because it applies to the in-state bank that has the consumer's credit card account.
The card-issuing banks would push the requirement back through the system to avoid liability. They would force banks to insist that MasterCard and Visa International issue rules which require merchant banks to change their merchant agreement to prevent anonymous merchants.
With penalties applied through the banking system, spammers would find their ability to collect money much reduced. They'd be kicked out of banks the way they used to be kicked off ISPs.
I really think my tax dollors could be spent on something better..like maybe giving it back to me.
I don't want to hear any more right-wing whining about getting tax dollars back until the federal debt is paid down. I don't want my taxes to be wasted to pay for interest on a debt accrued largely by fiscally irresponsible Republicans like Reagan, Bush, and the younger Bush.
spam is a techinical problem that can be solved through technical means.
THEN FUCKING SOLVE IT ALREADY! We've had this problem for a decade and people like you keep saying that technology can solve it. So invent the technology, get support for it, get it deployed, and solve the problem. You're watching people drown in spam and you keep telling us that the government should do nothing because you're planning to pull a technical solution out of your ass. Some day.
Anything else is just an excuse to have government regulate computer use.
I think that the government should regulate computer use so that idiot conspiracy theories like yours don't waste bandwidth and storage on the net.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.877:
and spend some time to boil off all the legalese, you will see that the bill is not intended to prevent spamming. That was used as a sales point, but is not supported anywhere in the text. The bill is written obscurely enough that ordinary people cannot read or understand it. I assume that is by design.
Some of the main things it does do:
It destroys all existing state and local level anti-spam laws. Some of them were actually becoming effective, so they had to go.
It removes any legal right of action from 99.99% of the population. The only entities who can bring action under it are ISPs and a few governmental agencies.
If these ISPs/Agencies want to bring suit they must do so in a federal court, not state, local, or small claims. If you don't have $10,000 (US) that you can throw away to make a point, there is no reason to go there. You cannot represent yourself and even normal attournies are not all qualified to go there.
The few federal agencies that can apply the law, such as state attourney generals, tend to already be fully occupied with things like rape, murder, grand theft, and chasing down workers in the drug and terrorism industries.
If you come up to them looking for help, they have to decide whether to look into a few annoying emails, or go out and catch passing speeders and arsonists and burglars. Because they only see 1/10,000,000 of any given spam run, it will look like nothing more than a misdemeanor. It will usually look like it is not even in their jursdiction. Guess who wins?
Small ISPs are unlikely to have the money to pursue cases under this law. Some of the major ISPs have gone after a dozen or so spammers. Even if they win every case, twelve or so prosecutions a year is not a noticable deterent for the remaining hundred thousand or so spammers.
The net effect is that this bill ought to be called the I-CAN-SPAM act, as this would represent it accurately.