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Canada Task Force Calls For Anti-Spam Law
Canrights writes "Canada's National Task Force on Spam released its final
report today. Despite prior
spam actions on privacy grounds in Canada, the task force is
calling for a tough new anti-spam law including penalties for failure
to obtain appropriate opt-in consents before sending commercial email
as well as private right of action to encourage Canadian lawsuits
against spammers. Professor
Michael Geist, who headed up the legal aspects of the task force,
provides a good
summary of the recommendations."
the spammed user actually get something out of it and not just the government itself?
Of course this has never been said on /. yet. mod me redundant please but hopefully eventually joe user will catch on.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
You know they'll always get their ham ... byproduct ... um, email.
...
About time an efficient and methodical group was let loose upon the denizens of the underworld who send out spam. Their chief weapons are Politeness, Sincerity, and a Stringent Application of Canadian Law to preserve a spam-free environment
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Or are there some bulk mailers for whom life in a forced labor camp on water and SPAM would do? (I know that latter thought risks being modded down for undue leniency...;-))
as opposed to the totally unworkable opt-out-unless-you're-rich-and-powerful US approach to spam.
Cool!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Canada is currently a relatively non-litigious society. It would be nice if it would stay that way. The use of litigation to effect change in a society or business community seems rather suspect: it puts in place a very odd set of incentives. Lawyers get more money the more problems there are, and individuals must fear the lack of liability insurance. Lawyers and insurance companies have a lot to gain from encouraging a litigious society while individual people have nothing to gain (that I can see).
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
How else am I supposed to meet slutty babes in my new timeshare which I had remortgaged with the help of my Nigerian friend? I got this penis enlargement for a reason!
The U.S. FTC "do-not-call" list worked wonders for phone spam for our household. We used to get at least 40 phone spams per month and now get less about 3 per month. Perhaps it could be employed to reduce the volume of spam, too.
To prevent contributing to spammers' DB of addresses, the list could be handled on a query-only basis. It's not fool proof, but any spammer caught with an HD full of "do-not-email" names would be in for a world of hurt.
I'm sure this proposal will get the obligatory "why this won't work" form letter, but then what solution to spam doesn't have a a long list of problems.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
when most spam is coming from abroad, this law helps how?
Pass a law for nothing!
Constipated? Pass a Law against it!
Replace common sense with government BS? PASS A LAW!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
...won't this merely stop spam coming directly from Canadian sources (excluding infected computers) and force them to either move to a country, or relay their spam through another country, with lax or non-existent rules regarding spam?
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
I'm for the comeback of the death penalty ;-)
You can't take the sky from me...
Pass a law making it legal to DoS attack any IP found to be the originating source of spam greater than a given threshold and the findinds verified independently by two peer spam-hunting organizations. Post said IP on confirmation and let the script kiddies have at them.
Spammers need to be hounded off the net. No ifs, ands, or butts. They need to go and should be subject to direct retribution equivalent to their own actions which amount in the aggregate to a DDoS on the mail systems across the Internet. How many admins have had servers collapse under the load, how many users have had connections die during downloading of thousands of spams and take forever to get to their real mail, etc.?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
..It's not a legitimate communications channel. Email is a cheap nasty crappy way of communicating that costs nothing. That's why people use it. Spam is just part of that. Email deserves spam. Email was made for spam.
Email in the workplace is even more pathetic; emailing someone sitting 2 feet away from you. Yeah great...not.
If people hate spam that much the best thing to do is create your own private email-like protocol where they can swap 'legitimate communications'.
Note the distinction between a proposal from an activist and a law that was actually passed. You may want to hang on a bit before moving to Saskatoon...
Note the distinction between a proposal from an activist and a law that was actually passed. You may want to hang on a bit before moving to Saskatoon...
... about the same as Seattle and I went to college there.
It's a summary of the law proposed by a crown task force. That's how they make laws up in Canada.
Besides, I'd move to Vancouver, what with spring being 10 days earlier than it was 10 years ago
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It's pretty much common knowledge that Florida is the source of a hell of a lot of spam. Our country is not the problem.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Why don't we just start requiering information that we can use to deal with the issue be included in every spam?
Requier all spam to state in the email where the opt-in came from all the way to the originiating source.
OK, you claim to be an opt-in list. Where did the opt-in come from?
Direct opt in? OK, include the IP address, date and time of the opt-in. Via mail or phone? ok, date, time and who entered it (ID number would be fine with me).
Did you buy it from a list? OK, which one? Where did they get it from?
So now we have something like this being added to each spam message:
This is an opt-in mailing list.
You were opted in to the viagraspam list 5/2/05 @04:01 via the john doe email list
You were opted in to the john doe email list 5/1/05 @19:53 via the scam-artis email list
You were oped in to the scam-artis email list 4/29/05 @16:32 via the real-web-store email list
You were oped in to the real-web-store email list 4/29/05 @03:22 via a direct request to the real-web-store web server. The request was made from IP address 192.168.1.1
We can now go back to real-web-store and nail them for giving out our email address. We can start to track how these lists spread, and deal with the trade in email addresses. When we better understand this aspect of things, we can mandate how many resales are legal. Or better yet, someone could write a plug-in for FF that pops up a big "This web store has been reported as being a source for email spam, use caution in giving them your email address" message.
Taxes.
Amend the Income Tax Act to tax revenues from spam in the insane range.
Canada has incredible legislative talent at finding new taxes to impose on people, and it's about time they start using this power for the Forces of Good.
Now if that happens and some spammer evades his taxes, it's off to a Federal PMITA prison.
And no conjugal visits.
Canadians are not alone (and how much spam are you getting from Europe?! See, their approach demonstrably does work!)
How many countries more do you think it takes to enact enforceable opt-in until the result will be "Spamerica, we have you surrounded?"
This counts for _Canadian_ spammers. I think I remember that 84% of all communications on the entire Internet is Spam 94% of it are either originating from U.S. spammers (operating sending hosts in China, Spain, France...), or advertising U.S. services or goods, also sold through web sites in China, Spain, France, .... .
I would not agree with that retaliation approach, that causes more traffic than the spam alone.
I would suggest to:
punish also people who run open relays or compromised hosts, or load 'make money on the Internet' spam relay software:
if I drive with a light off I get a ticket, independent of me noticing it or not.
So why does anyone treat an irresposnible person (knowingly or not originating/relaying spam) differently from the spam originator.
Putting a not road worthy vehicle on an Interstate is a punishable crime.
Putting an open relay, a compromizes host, or some insecdure out of the box system directly on the Internet should be treated the same way.
I would like the situation, where an individual can sue a spammer for each email received: $10,000 per incident.
This would clena spam right out. There would be so many bounty hunters tracking down spammers, and presenting 10 or 20 spams traced back to said spammer, just to make a good cut.
Spamming would be financially risky. ... and when do the trolls who employ spammers finally realize that they have been taken to the cleaners with 'clicks' and 'responses', which are nothing else but system automeated events, with no relation if the email has been read, or just deleted.
Looking at what I see in spam:
only scammers use spammers:
pharmacies, adult junk, non-existent mortgages (they are only after YOUR SSN, phone, and address, and credit report, to resell all that), and the usual pump-and-dump stock 'advisor'.
So spam is not of real public interest;
and since 'spam' is only designated as such if there were several independent complaints, there's no risk that any buddy's email will get deleted by chance (I do not do keyword searches or message content originated flagging).
In my view:
make spam expensive,
make it easy to file a complaint,
and make all spam participating parties pay the same:
spam sender (open relay owner or misconfigured system operating troll): $10,000 per incident
spamverdtised website operator: $10,000 per incident
spamvertised web site hoster (yes!): $10,000/incident
spam designer ('the spammer') and real originator: $10,000/incident.
This way, if I would get 20 emails advertising Microsoft office fotr $80, I would get
$10,000 from each sending IP (open relay or troll) for each email
$10,000 for each spamvertised web site (same content, moved to different site)
$10,000 from the 'pharmacy' for each email it appears in
$10,000 for each email from the real spammer:
This is $40,000 from all the jparticipating/profiting/stupid enablers, per email.
a 20 time occurrence of the usual blue pill knock=off would net me $800,000.
This would get
- lawyers really hot
- private eyes with Internet really busy
- some people somewhat richer (the lawyers...)
- some people _really_ scared
And since all would be at risk who create and enable spam, all spam enabling factors would be attacked at the same time, with no extra byte on the Internet, like retaliation would do.
Any attorneys wanting to put down a base for a new (short lived) aera of class action suits, against spammers?
And attorney - legislators listening....?
Come on, let's feed on spammers !
d
I live in Belgium and my mailserver where I recieve my mail is in the US. How can I file a complaint to a spammer in the Florida, or anywhere in the US or anywhere in any country?
When I do it here, they say they are unable to do anything, because the crime was not commited in Belgium. The efficientcy of abuse mailadresses has been shown by the amount of spam we get.
I am afraid that to get someting really done, we need much much much more spam. Spam in the amounts that it stops all internet traffic. Hopefully THEN either governements take actions or people will tell their governements to take action.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'm posting this anonymously for obvious reasons: I work for a company (in Canada) that sends out commercial email several times a year to people who have both previously purchased from us, and who have opted in to receive more information from us via email. We do not buy email lists - we only email people who have given us their email address. We also very stringently observe PIPEDA (Canada's information privacy act) and every single email we send out contains a link that will forever removed their address from our database. However, users are idiots. They forget that they signed up for the email and complain that they are being spammed. They expend a great amount of energy getting angry, writing angry emails, telling their ISPs we are spamming them, etc, reporting us to spam lists, etc. Anything but actually click the link included in the email that would remove them from the list, no muss, no fuss. Now this law... imagine how hard it is going to be to get prior approval (again) to send people this information - would sending them an email asking for their premission to send an email be spamming them? Does not failure to use the included functional unsubscribe function in the email constitute approval to continue to send these emails? Something else that happens -- people actually change ISPs once in a while, and their email address changes. Bernard Ozo with the email address of b.ozo@shaw.ca decides to sign up with, say, Sasktel, and his email changes to b.ozo@sasktel.net. Brenda Ozo decides one day she'd like internet and calls up shaw. Her shiney new email address is now b.ozo@shaw.ca. Now, email that was prevously OK to send to b.ozo@shaw.ca is now unwanted flaming spam to Brenda, who decides to get legal on our ass... Imagine the bewildering amount of legal bullshit our company is going to have to endure when one of these idiot customers decides to lodge a formal complaint about the mail they agreed to receive? Or that got accidentally sent to them because they ended up with the same email address as one of our previous customers. Sigh.
We just had a provincial election here in British Columbia yesterday. During the campaign, my email was bombarded by spam, from all the parties fielding candidates. I received an average of fifteen political emails per day, on each of my email accounts. Interestingly, one of these accounts was created for, and only known to, the Ministry of Human Resources, a part of the government, and it received just as much spam as the others. If the government is directly sending, or is complicit in the sending of unsolicited email, what makes you think a law against it will be followed or enforced?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Why doesn't canada pass an anti-corruption bill... oops, that would put all the liberals in jail. Nevermind.
was going to be CAN-SPAM-ADA.
Say it over and over..
... canspamada canspamada canspamada..
:)
to the tune of the the monty python spam song.
sounds like my mail server trying to deal with all the bloody spam.. spam spam spam...
canspamada
sorry
yes it has been a slow week
Move along... there is no sig here.
Now that would be some legislation I could get behind. ( just kidding, please don't flame me if you're Canadian. I'm not from Minnesota so there's really not much you can do to me. )
The report presses for compulsory SPF publishing accross the entire .ca TLD. Isn't that the big news?
I am all for this as long as it does not affect my communications with Mr. Rufus Mukhenze of the Nigerian Bank of Commerce.
Adventure City Tours
How about disableing automatic scripting, link browsing and activeX from mail clients.
That must work. How about law that forbids leaky web/mail servers or web clients.
It is better to prevent the cancer then to alow it to spread and then to cure it!
Just a tehnical thought. Spammers are useing a fake 'from adresses' so the mail deamon could check if 'from address' exists and if it is accepting return mail ( new feature, eg subject: 'Delivery notification.' body: 'Sucess.')
If maillits are forbidden ( also new feature ) spammers will get a lot of return mail and also be recorded by previous feature.
I think this is not so hard to implement, but, today only dumb spammers use home computers to spam.
Smart spammers use scripts on mail servers to spam.
So there should be a LAW AGAINST DUMB SERVERS !!!