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FTC Tries to Can Sex Spam
F_SMASH writes "The United States' Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has charged a group of companies and individuals with failing to include required warnings on 'sex' related spam e-mail."
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One of the companies, Global Net Ventures, is based in the UK. How is the US FTC going to charge them?
Trolling is a art,
it's about time someone took care of these bastards - i like the occasional titty but getting surprises at work is a bit extreme...
/not so
Sex in a can? I think I've seen something like this before.. err--
Never mind.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
yeah, but they're trying to can the only spam that I actually like!
'Cause now we can just set our spam filters to look out for something like "WARNING: This message's content might not be suited for..." right in the subject!
(my emphasis)
Seriously, are their email clients that display images in the subject line?!
putting their finger in the leak in the dike. The Internet is much bigger than one nation. The solution is going to have to be technological, not regulatory.
Great, the FTC is stopping the only spam I looked forward to. Now the only thing I have to live for are those v14.gr4 emails. I'm glad their m4d l33t sp34k sk1llz c4n 5t1ll d3f34t my 5p4m f1lt3r.
Seriously, are their email clients that display images in the subject line?!
Piece of cake, mate ;-)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
What is it with this administration and sex? Janet Jackson -- huge fine for small tits. Sex spam -- have to stop that right now.
Why not go after the 419 spammers who are stealing people's life savings? Or how about the fake pills and illegal drugs? Just business, I guess.
Because the lawmakers in the US don't care about right and wrong, and they don't care about the general public, they care about the companies that give them lots of money. The DMA wrote the Can-Spam act to ensure that they could continue to spam, and congress passed to to ensure that the DMA members would continue to bribe them.
Of course the government is cracking down on sex spam. Just imagine...
You're a middle-aged guy stuck in a bureacratic position. You spend your days debating horribly dreary points of order and generally struggling to effect any meaningful change...
Then somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey [your name], wanna drop what you're doing and spend a few weeks/months looking at porn?"
Yeah, tough decision there.
Now how am I supposed to meet Christine, Joy, or all the other girls who desperatly seek my company?!
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
How are people deciphering what the hell spam is tying to sell these days? What am I supposed to do with an email like this:
Subject: PharmaBGHZ8
Message:
Hurtnig?
At least with porn spam, you have something to look at.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
I know it is standard procedure to ridicule anything the present administration does, but going after ANY spammers is OK in my book. And going after the worst of the porn spammers is even better. Hell, I'l a geek and have been known to look at that stuff but these days I feel like I need a bath after I work through my inbox.... and that is after spamassassin has had first crack at it.
Democrat delenda est
You might want to loosen your tinfoil hat some.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Oh - wait - "tries to can sex spam"... suddenly the name of that law makes more sense. I had been reading "can spam" as, "you can spam and nobody can sue you as long as you follow these rules"; it never occured to me that they might have intended "can" to be a verb. I was really surprised that Congress was being so straightforward about their intentions with that law, given that cutesy acronyms for law names are usually feel-good propaganda that mean something completely opposite of whatever the law actually does. I guess they outsmarted themselves with that acronym, since it works in both directions...
There's some expression about not assuming malice that I think is pertinent here....
Congress is made up of many individuals, not all of whom are taking bribes from the DMA. To suggest otherwise would involve a conspiracy that is simply too large to be feasible.
CAN-SPAM is, over all, a decent law. It places restrictions on marketers that allow end-users to filter out what they don't want to see without completely making it illegal and thus denying either some unforseen but legitimate use for unsolicited email, or denying it to end-users who actually do want to see it. And let's face it - some people do want to see this spam because there would be no SPAM if there wasn't a segment of society making it economical.
http://travel.state.gov/law/info/judicial/judicial _690.html
Criminal Cases Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaties: Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaties (MLATs) are relatively recent development. They seek to improve the effectiveness of judicial assistance and to regularize and facilitate its procedures. Each country designates a central authority, generally the two Justice Departments, for direct communication. The treaties include the power to summon witnesses, to compel the production of documents and other real evidence, to issue search warrants, and to serve process. Generally, the remedies offered by the treaties are only available to the prosecutors. The defense must usually proceed with the methods of obtaining evidence in criminal matters under the laws of the host country which usually involve letters rogatory. See "Questions" below.
MLAT Treaties in Force:
I. The United States has bilateral Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLAT) currently in force with: Anguilla*, Antigua/Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands*, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dominica, Egypt, Estonia, Greece, Grenada, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Korea (South), Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Montserrat*, Morocco, Netherlands, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Romania, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Trinidad, Turkey, Turks and Caicos Islands*, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay.
Many countries have signed the Hague Convention which include the rules on cross border enforcement of civil judgments.
Fight Spammers!
there is no inherit right to send bulk unsolicited email that clogs my SMTP servers
No, but "Your" != "All".
I am ***NOT*** defending spam, or the activity of spamming. Keep in mind that spam is a moneymaking venture that would cease to make money if it was not welcomed by its target market.
Willing, albeit stupid, buyers have a right to buy any legal product sold legally. Of course, illegal UCE should be dealt with under fraud or other applicable civil/criminal statutes.
Also, bear in mind that you accept some risk of undesired traffic entering your network and reaching your connected hosts (including your SMTP/POP3 servers) by purchasing internet service. It's the same type of risk any gunslinger faced in the wild west, but with fewer potential gunshot wounds.
Interesting. I'm in favor of this because it's merely enforcing honest labeling. Which I consider a legitimate function of government.
I don't consider it reasonable for the govt. to decide what minors can and cannot watch. That's their parent's job. But honest labeling makes the parent's job feasible. OTOH, I would be quite opposed to their censoring spam, including sex related spam. But I would be in favor of their regulating the honesty of the sending e-mail address, at least for commercial e-mail, and e-mail requesting any kind of financial transaction. (I'm not clear that they have, or should have, ANY right to regulate non-commercial e-mail. In fact I rather think not.)
1: Within limits. Excessive labelling requirements can be as bad as excessive taxation. OTOH, the govt. doesn't get as much reward from it so it has less incentive.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Either +1 insightful, or +1 funny. (actually it's depressingly RIGHT).
Nope. Courts have sided against the "Free Speach Means I Get To Do Whatever I Want" argument in the past, with no sign of it changing. The fact that you are unfamiliar with the issues doesn't change this fact.
Faxes have had laws against fax spam for awhile. Those have been challeneged in court, and the laws stand. Telemarketing used to be a minor annoyance, and it grew and grew until we ended up with the Do Not Call list. Tele-spammers have tried to argue "Free Speech" in regards to that law, and again they have lost. You would never argue that I had a right to advertise by painting my ad on your car or house without permission, so why would you believe that spammers forcing their unwanted crap onto millions of other peoples computers to be acceptable?
A couple of quotes from judges :
U.S. Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin:
"[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of speech is threatened but because their profits are; to dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans the principles for which the First Amendment stands."
Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court:
"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even good ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every persons domain."
So much for the free speech nonsense.
I sincerely doubt that the companies that employ spammmers, especially porn spammers, make enough money to make it worth their while to buy a congressman.
Porn is one of the most profitable online businesses. (Offline, too. Sex sells.) Porn showed other companies *how* to use the web to make money. Even so, the porn spammers were obviously not the ones that managed to get the CAN-SPAM law passed, or there would not be additional restrictions for porn spam. And they aren't all small timers. For instance, Columbia House (you know - the "Get 10 albums for 10 cents!" people) has recently created a porn division.
The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) wrote CAN-SPAM. It has very, very large businesses as members. Visit the link. You'll notice that the top section of the page is nothing but search engine keyword spam.
From their page, some of their members :
The DMA membership roster includes companies like AT&T, IBM, AOL Time Warner, Mellon Bank, Microsoft, Home Shopping Network, The New York Times, Rapp Collins, Prudential Insurance, Phillip Morris, Proctor & Gamble, as well as R.R. Donnelley, Acxiom, Experian and DoubleClick.
Now, do you want to stick with your "they can't afford to lobby congress" story? The DMA didn't want spam to be banned, so they managed to get a law past that let congresscritters say "Look, we passed a law against spam!" while actually passing a law that just formalised how to spam legally.
You might want to loosen your tinfoil hat some.
You might want to educate yourself about the issues instead of talking trash just because you don't understand.
Speech like the illegal junk faxes they already regulate? Speech like that of Telemarketers, who have to respct the DNC list? Speech like yelling "FIRE!" in a theatre?
The government already regulates speech. If they were to try to stop anyone from talking about X, there are few instances where they can justify it. (The "Fire" example would be one example where they can.) However, saying "You can not force anyone to listen to what you want to say" is perfectly reasonable.