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Spamford Wallace Draws A Restraining Order
Steve Rock writes "According to an article in the Associated Press, a temporary restraining order has been issued by a judge against Stanford Wallace and his companies. The case marks the first anti-spyware action taken by the Federal Trade Commission, and while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech it appears a tougher approach will be taken with alleged spyware distribution."
I've got some great spam here on cheap legal services.
When will Gator and WhenU be similarily restrained?
"Free speech" only applies to the extent that you have the right to speak freely, it does not extend to the point that you have a right to be heard, as you dont.. Nor does it allow that I have to pay to hear your "free speech".
Same reasons fax-Spam is illegal. It costs the recipient.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"...while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech..."
Now that's a new one...
What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?
My point here is that nobody should legally be able to flood your email account with messages you don't want. It wastes the resources both of the systems across which the messages travel and of the people who have to go through them. In addition, it has been repeatedly shown in studies that unsolicited email is not an effective advertising strategy.
In summary, free speech is the right to express your views, not to shove them in someone's face without their permission.
Do they even know that they're bad guys, or do they have themselves fooled?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
With physical mailing systems like the USPS and Fedex, the bulk mailers have to pay to send you their printed spam. In the case of the private services, they are paying for the cost of sending and receiving the communication, and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.
Online spammers, however, are not paying for their usage of my email server. Most of my email is delivered to my website's hosting service, which I pay a monthly fee for. Any spam that is sent to me costs me money in the form of infrastructure that my hosting service has to maintain to keep the QoS acceptable. They are thus, even if only indirectly, burdening me with part of their cost. We are not paying into a subsidized system.
At a minimum, I have a right to refuse all of their communications, and the only thing that keeps me from supporting massive litigation and regulation is the ineptitude of the legislatures to craft workable legislation that won't turn into another big lawyer feeding fest. Still, though, the Internet, unlike the USPS, is a totally private service, at least in the US. As such, if I choose to "censor" the spammers, that is my right as a paying user, especially since the government isn't doing it for me.
I think the solution to spamming might be to give a right of private action to infrastructure providers to fine the big guys for imposing cost on them. Seriously, let the hosting services and telecoms sue the pants off them for imposing the burden of supporting more bandwidth and hardware just to provide an adequate QoS.
And as for spyware, I think the best thing that could be done would be to amend the federal anti-cracking laws so that any software that is bundled that acts like spyware must inform the user on installation or the company that made it is guilty of federal anti-cracking law violations. Make every individual at Gator responsible, from the software developers to the CEO for criminal violations that could get them locked up for a few years if Gator as a corporation is found guilty.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I have always considered seeing if one of the owners of a computer that was rendered unusable by spyware that I know would be interested in launching a civil suit. I would imagine that sneaking something onto someone's property and causing damage that could at least be measured in hundreds if not thousands of dollars would merit a court case.
_____
Thank you.
Really? Well, me personally, I'm not so sure what the problem with spyware. It's just another legitimate way of doing business. They did agree to the EULA allowing it after all, didn't they?
Take me for example. I sell preassembled computer systems. As part of the package I include a short, 83-page EULA that fires up when they first boot the system. After accepting the EULA (which they don't see until after I've cashed their cheque btw) I drop around to the customers house and install a series of automatic pop-up rock flingers in their front garden. At 3am the rock flingers pelt their bedroom windows with small rocks... generally not enough to break the glass, but I'm working on it. When they come out to see what the problem is, a hidden speaker blares out "Buy computer hardware from OverflowingBitBucket Inc!".
Thankfully the supplied EULA allows me to do this, so it's all legal. In fact, I'm anticipating an increase in business, as several customers have called me _personally_ and said they'll be dropping around to see me real soon now.
Exactly. Same with things like muggings, too; so long as the social problem of poverty exists, there will be muggings, armed robbery, etc. Clearly they shouldn't be illegal either.
If spam is such a problem for networks and humans (and definitely it is, and getting worse), then why aren't we seeing TV/Radio PSAs explaining why it is inherently a bad thing? Since everyone universally hates spam, this lack of public service information seems to be an implicit blind eye to the problem. Intel, AMD, Apple, etc. could bump up the corporate goodwill by publicly denouncing that which 99.9% of all email users consider to be a scourge of the internet. What would it cost, a few dozen millions in order to saturate the popular media for a few weeks? That's peanuts to these guys.
I have a feeling that spammers make a huge amount of money selling lists to other would-be spammers.
Umm, legislation is pretty much the *only* way to fix social problems.
Just like any other form of fraud, you can't eliminate it completely, but you can certainly slow it down.
Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.
No, spam will never end as long as there are fools who *THINK* that people will buy products advertised via spam.
The spammers making money *aren't* doing so by selling products, they are making money by getting fools who have products to pay them to spam.
Looks like they've suckered you into believing their lies.
There are some of objections I'd make to your argument:
Find free books.
Taken a sociology class lately? Almost every problem is a social problem. Crime is a social problem. Poverty is a social problem. Discrimination is a social problem. But we still create laws against crime, welfare programs, and anti-discrimination laws, even though we know we'll never eliminate these problems. Legislation can never completely solve social problems, but if enacted and enforced well, it can reduce them. Not by stopping each and every spammer or malware creater on the planet, but by taking out the big fish and keeping the small fry intimidated enough that they never grow too big.
They don't understand the bit where it says "Congress shall make no law restraining the freedom of speech".
Okay, that's a bit disingenious - they do understand it, they just hope you don't. It's why they try to make it sound as if Congress passing laws dealing with a specific mode of theft of services (spam, spyware, trackerware, thiefware and other commercial malware that does not also violate other laws such as phishing and ID theft) is somehow "Restricting commercial free speech".
No such goddamned thing - it's congress putting the assholes on notice that "You! Yes, you. The laws of theft of service applies to you too."
However, spyware/thiefware (Gator/Claria, WhenU, and Spamford in this instance) is even worse - they specifically set out to steal the revenue from other affiliate/content providers/merchants and they also steal the computing resources neccesary to do this from you.
Bayesian filtering and such can to some extent stop spammers. Ad-aware and Spybot can to some extent deal with hijackers. But neither is a solution to corporate interests legally stealing resources from others, is it?
The next spam mail you get in your email, you can send a "Fuck you very much" to the Direct Marketers Association in the USA who spent more money lobbying for an opt-out regime than the rest of us will see in a lifetime.
Their Canadian counterparts in the Canadian Direct Marketer's Association on the other hand has adopted a strong support for opt-in and preferably verifiable/double opt-in as the industry Recommended Best Pratice.
The CDMA understood something the DMA failed to get: in the long run, it's Bad For Business to piss off your potential customers.
First off, you're bidding against guys in India and parts of Eastern Europe where $200 is a month's rent. The buyers are well aware of this and drive the price down to far beyond minimum wage. I've done a couple projects which equate to cents on the hour, but again, food on the table.
Cents per hour? Are you nuts? WalMart is paying $9.50/hr for a cashier.
For each cent you're making you're costing everybody else hundreds.
Write some open source in the evenings to keep your resume hot and you'll have a real contracting job soon enough.
The problem is what you're doing is not a scalable behavior. As yourself, "what if everybody did what I'm doing?" Think that through and you'll see your behavior is not ethical.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Food on the table," always the refuge of those breaking the law that think it's ok. Of course, it seems that usually "food on the table" means "Quality food on the nice teak dining set in my tastefully appointed 3 bedroom house in a good neighbourhood with a new Audi and Subaru parked out front."
To quote Chris Rock: "Please cut the fucking shit."
There are many, millions in fact, people in this nation that put food on the table and sustain themselves doing menial jobs, often for minimum wage. I've done that before. There are plenty of low level jobs doing construction, washing dishes, etc out there. If you need work to feed yourself, it is always available. For that matter, there are plenty of social services available that will get you fed as well.
So let's not play this game. You got out of a job, probably because your ethics are in the shiiter and you aren't very good at what you do. I mean who wants to hire someone who has crappy work eithic and general eithics where it's ok to break the law so long as it puts them ahead?
So you turn to spam, something which was clearly immoral and receantly became illegal. Why? Not because you need to eat, as I said, there is ample oppertunity out there to get shit work that'll give you money enoug to get food and shelter, but becuase you think you're special, and deserve more. You seem to think that you ahve a right to make lots of money doing computer shit and if you can't do it legally, well than dammit doing it illegaly is justified.
Give it up, you have no moral high ground here.
The really funny thing is I know many people in It who are in a position where they hire other people. Nearly all of them are looking for people to hire, that's right, they want to give more people a job. The problem is, they can't find people qualified for the job. They find many people who's skills just aren't up to their talk.
So get off it. Also, you might want to update your homepage, if you truly are in the grips of unemployment. Gabbing about how spam is what you must do to put food on the table while proclaiming to have employent with a large chain on your page doesn't help your stance.