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Ohio Law Could Send Spammers To Jail
ej0c writes "We in Ohio are set to save you from Spam. The legislature, with AOL's help, passed a tough anti-spam bill (Reuters). Spam in Ohio, and you'll be in the can for 6 months, with fines of $25,000 per violation, or $2 to $8 per e-mail. Text of the Act."
Doesn't the federal "CAN SPAM" act prevent state laws from taking effect? I thought that was one of the main provisions that kept the new California law (at the time) from happening.
Well, I do all my spamming from China. Come get me.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
...who owns a Zombie machine. I hope that was taken into consideration.
1) Does this affect spammers who operate in Ohio but send the spam from outside of the state? Or outside of the country?
2) Does this affect spammers from outside of Ohio who send spam into the state?
We send drug dealers and drug buyers to jail, we should treat spam the same way.
We should punish the idiots that buy things advertised in Spam.
One could argue that the "war on drugs" is a failure, and for the most part they'd be right, but I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs. People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.
Take away the incentive to send the spam out and fewer people will risk it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
save yourself. Get Firefox. (I never thought I would have to do this on Slashdot.)
There are already *plenty* of laws under which to prosecute spammers. They simply aren't enforced... The problem is not a lack of laws, it is a lack of resources/motivation/knowledge on the part of law enforcement. I would much rather see a commitment to spend a few million actually *doing* something - and when you consider the drain spammers are on the economy, it would be money well spent.
SSL Certificate
A prison term is the only way to truly deter someone from spamming. Financial penalties are pointless. When Joe Trailerpark decides to start spamming, he is faced with the choice of doing something that is financially lucrative or doing the next best alternative which would probably be something along the lines of working at Taco Bell. The way he sees it, even if he were sued for everything he had, he wouldn't be any worse off than he would have been by not spamming and taking the shitty fast food job. Prison on the other hand would make him really stop and think, and most likely he would decide that spamming just isn't worth it. Sure some people will do it anyway, just like some people sell drugs, but that is what the legal system is there for.
Ohio legislators sent an anti-spam bill to Gov. Bob Taft on Tuesday, with the aim of joining other U.S. states that have laws that put people who flood the Web with junk e-mail behind bars.
I guess if you use webmail the "Web" could get flooded with junk "e-mail" (previously known as email for at least 10 years), otherwise the "journalist" looks pretty dumb right from the 1st sentence.
If signed into law, it would outlaw Internet ads that are deceptive or misleading and ban people from setting up false accounts to send spam, the junk e-mail that clogs consumers' online mailboxes and taxes the resources of Internet service providers.
The measure would also allow the state attorney general to impose criminal and civil sanctions against spammers.
fraud n.
1) A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
2) A piece of trickery; a trick.
3) a) One that defrauds; a cheat.
3) b) One who assumes a false pose; an impostor.
I know of no state in the United States where fraud is already legal. I'd be content with enforcement of existing laws before wasting time and effort passing new laws where enforcement of either the new or existing law is nonexistant.
why don't we go after spammers in snail mail?
I really don't want advertisments ANYWHERE unless I say ok, so why is snail mail exempt? Granted, most of it is not offensive ( except for the odd jury summons ), but that doesn't change the fact that it's unsolicited junk mail, albeit arriving via physical means instead of electronic.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I am all for taking a tough approach to spammers, but putting them in jail? Have you heard about the prison overcrowding problem?
Why don't we instead seize all of their assets, profits, and make some money for the people, instead of having to pay for them in jail?
This is more feel-good legislation that will probably have no teeth because it takes too much work for too little result. Real change requires going back to holding ISPs responsible for spam -- cutting the worst off at the uplink when they don't put some minimal effort into keeping their users from spamming.
Maybe that'll mean certain countries are delinked until a scrupulous ISP shows up. It'll do a hell of a lot more than prosecuting a handful of spammers here.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
Punishing American spammers but letting the Chinese off seems awfully unfair to me.
Follow the money. If it comes back to Ohio then they've got a case.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, everybody should do their part. China is good at controlling Internet Access, and spammers are one group of criminals for whom labor/re-education camps would be actually approporiate and helpful. When they start a crackdown on spam under international pressure, I am sure they'll have excellent results.
In the meantime, Ohio can jail CEOs of companies that advertise through spam.
Physical spam is actually more of a nuissance IMO because it is wasteful of real resources and takes up space in my trash bin (requiring me to empty it more frequently, requiring me to buy more trash bags). Also, I live in an apartment building in which the communal area is regularly a trash heap from tenants who refuse to take their unwanted flyers and catalogues with them when they retrieve their mail.
in essence, if a federal law does not specifically permit an activity, it is within the state's power to prohibit that activity. The State law here [but IANAL] appears very clearly written and defines all its terms and the crime described in those terms with some precision. If a spammer is fighting this law in court, they will have to show that the Fed regulation [sorry, text not available to me here] explicitly permits something that the Ohio law has prohibited. [Law is NEVER as simple as the people enacting it would wish or would promise their constituents.]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Wait a second -- you seem to be implying that if something isn't punished in another country, it shouldn't be punished here. Why not punish them here? It's not going to stop all spam, of course, but it doesn't make sense to scoff at each individual step because it doesn't solve the whole problem immediately. Even if all we do is stop all spam from inside the US (eventually, I hope) it'll then make it that much easier to identify spam and deal with spam.
Yep.
We've got the Dept of Homeland Security, FBI and CIA chasing terrorists around the world and tracking down their fundraising, but without pursuing all the spammers, for all we know, terrorists are raising funds with phishing and selling junk through spam. Their contempt for people is so complete that they'll slaughter their own countrymen and consider it an acceptable loss in pursuing their goals, so they'd have no problem offering anything and everything to those gullible enough to take them up on whatever offer or hand over their passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers or personal identification bits.
The problem with W. is he still sees the enemy as something that you can shoot or drop a bomb on. No wonder people say there's a problem with intelligence.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nope, I'm a laywer, they're lawyers, this is how we're taught to think. If we can assume that a sheet of paper signed by a judge will keep your ex girlfriend from stalking you, we can certainly assume that the law will keep spam at bay. (And thus technological solutions are not needed.)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
There are multiple Americas. There share some common needs, and have some common traits, but the East Coast has different needs and wants than the West Coast. Different still are the needs and want of the South, the Southwest, the Industrial/Great Lakes Region, the Northwest, and the Midwest (Grainbelt).
Farmers have different needs than auto manufacturers, and insurance companies, and stock brokers, and software houses need.
This is why states rights is such an attractive doctrine. A solution for Kansas, may not work for Alabama, and a solution for New York might make no sense for Nevada.
My Heart Is A Flower
Theft of service.
It costs that person distributing flyers - the paper, the toner/ink, etc. That comes out of their pocket, not yours. That is why I'm willing to tolerate junk mail - because I'm not footing the bill for it.
On the other hand, those of us who pay for bandwidth, servers, etc end up footing the bill for spam, because its our system that has to accept/store the crap.
Imagine if the junk mailers started sending their crap COD through the mail, and expected you to pay for it.
Now, if spammers want to pay me a monthly fee of around $10,000 to cover expenses associated with them using my resources, as well as make sure my users get paid for the time they spend reading the spam, I may let them in.
Ahh, one can dream...
Brielle
I think that an investigation would prove an unwilling zombie to be innocent. If they can't find a money trail or anything for you, and no supporting evidence other than the existance of trojans on your machine, they must conclude you got hijacked. Someone just being clever in running a compromised machine on purpose to pretend to be a victim is going to slip up elsewhere, their life-situation may easily give them away. An investigation can show that you have stuff in your house you shouldn't be able to afford on your declared income, for example. When they start asking questions about that stuff, you're in trouble.
I don't like spam anymore than anyone else but my advice to you is to install a spam filter and shut up. I get one piece of spam a day.
Who the hell cares how much spam you hide from yourself, spam ostrich? Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean that it's not there. You still paid for the bandwidth the spammer used. If you're using your ISP's mail server, you paid them for the storage and delivery of the spam. Spammers are costing everyone money.
If you can't bare that toll, time to get off the Interweb.
While your time may have zero value, others do value their time and an attorney, CPA, or other professional using the net should not have to invest his time, or his money, fighting off spammers. Spammers are stealing from him and hurting his ability to earn a livelihood and should be jailed just like any other thief. Why the hell should millions of people have to invest billions of dollars and countless hours just so that spammers can spam without fear of jail time?
While your little geek-boy spam filter might suit your needs, I've worked with someone who consults to the real-estate industry and real-estate agents are bombarded with spam -- as well as legitimate business newsletters, business communications, and client communications. In order to be competitive, they have to post their e-mail address online. And that means that it gets harvested. They can't afford to lose a commission on a half-million dollar home sale by posting some javascript obsfuscated mailto link that doesn't work with the buyer's or seller's web browser. Nor do they want to get important mortgage rate information scrapped -- but they don't want some spam with a refinance-your-home scam.
I have my own domain and probably get two to three pieces of spam a week through my blacklists and filters, but I'm a grown-up, so I recognize that what I, as an individual, do isn't going to work for most businesses. If I bounce all mail from Taiwan, that's fine. If a business does, they might miss out on important correspondence that translates to large sums of money.
Sure it does. I think too many people get caught up in the whole red team vs blue team nonsense, especially when both teams really stink right now.
Spam, otoh, is a real and tangible problem that affects me daily at work and at home. I haven't read the text yet, but I applaud people working over real issues rather than silly my team vs your team crap.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
This is as silly as the idea that you should serve jail time for copying copyrighted materials. While there is some economic impact of spamming, there is little actual physical harm done by it.
Instead, I think fines should be enforced. And a rate of something like $1/message seems fine to me (pun intended).
Jailing someone is an extreme measure to take. I might argue that it's cruel and unusual.
How is this flamebait? "Ohio" is a protest song written as a direct result of the Kent State incident. If expressing a certain level of dismay at the parody of the song is "flamebait" then the original post with the parody is certainly no less flamebait then this is.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The only problem with jail as the answer is that it is too pleasent to be a deterrent.
Remove the TV's, books and all other forms of entertainment. Make prisoners work for their living and generally make sure they do not want to go back to prison.
There is too much acceptance of unsociable behavior, the idea that such behavior does not warrant strong actions promotes more extreme behavior.
Spamming is unsociable and society should expect strong action to be taken to punish those responsible. It is not a crime someone commits accidentally, it is committed by people who care more about themselves than society, why on earth should society treat them leniently???
A very few years ago, there were less than a hundred major spammers. And most of them were low-rent operations. One arrest per week would have killed off the spam industry.
Now that organized crime is involved, it's going to be much harder.
On the other hand, "legitimate" spam is almost dead. You see few spams today from any business that is even vaguely legitimate.
Why should I (an Ohio tax payer) pay to keep a non-violent criminal in jail? Most jails are so over crowded they parole people early to make space. I don't care if you want to fine spammers, but don't ask me to support them in jail. Jail should be for people who are a danger to society, not for someone who sends junk emails.
Actually, an effective law would need to allow for whats known as a "private right of action" where individuals (or groups of individuals, classes, etc) can *SUE* senders of spam for damanges.
Anything requiring DA's to be involved will not be enough of a threat to spammers. And yes, it needs to be written without regards as to the *content* of the spam, as you note.