Slashdot Mirror
Tweaking the CAN-SPAM Act
rbochan writes "The Register is reporting that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is consulting on proposed changes to the CAN-SPAM Act. Changes would include clarifying the definitions of the terms person and sender, and altering the time allowed for a sender to to honor an opt-out request. The FTC proposal is available as a PDF on the official FTC site." From the article: "Critics have accused the Act of being narrow and weak, accusations that may be hard to deny given that the US sends more spam than any other, according to a recent report by anti-virus firm Sophos."
The purpose of the CAN-SPAM act wasn't to stop spam, it was to legitimize spam sent by the DMA and its members.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
What we really need is a federal CAN CONGRESS act. Please, as though this is a problem that legislation can fix. If Congress really, truly wanted to end spam, why not allocate some grant money to improving anti-spam technology?
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
"It is also proposing to shorten from 10 days to three the time a sender may take before honouring a recipient's opt-out request;"
Yeah, so now they only have 3 days to sell my address to 100 other spam lists.
João Pinheiro
It all speaks to our fondest value in the us, evident in places as diverse as SPAM, excessive plastic surgery, and corporate welfare/rights: so long is someone can believably assert that they are "just trying to make a buck," our national consciousness and our lawmaking machinery are \\absolutley loath\\ to do anything to slow them down, whether the argument is ethnical, environmental, logistical, criminal...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'd call it the Can't Spam Act.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Existing laws should be applicable. Lets see spam at a minimum usually involves
* forgery with the intention to deceive.
* theft of service
* trespassing
Reshape the existing laws to include new technologies.
While we are at it, go after the end benificiary of spam. The ones selling a product or service. I know some will say that it is too easy to set someone up. Is it? In the U.S. one is presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Hmm... we should be able to spot a setup.
Heck why laws at all? Most times the parties involved cross multiple boundries/jurisdictions. Laws, in the long run, are not the way to go. The technology needs fixing
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
All I want is the right for a simple small claims mediation. Let me shoulder the burden of prosecution! These guys are absolutely punishing my email servers and bandwidth. Let me hit them back! Here is how it would go:
:)
Me: I didn't ask for this email and I have no relationship with the vendor. Here is the proof that I got spam for their product, directing me to the following websites they control...
Mediator: Do you have proof that DaGoodBoy agreed to be solicited?
Spammer: Uh...
Mediator: That will be $500 bucks. Next!
If I lose, I'll agree to pay $500 for the trouble. Hell, let this happen on a teleconference with a mediation company sanctioned by the government instead of court. I bet I could make a living just from persuing my spammers!
Either this or just look the other way while I set up an anonymous payout deadpool for the members of the ROKSO list...
My God! It's full of Voids!
The Government doesn't know how to solve problems, all they know how to do is create legislation using their limited understanding of the problem. "Spam is bad, therefore we should make it illegal!" Nice job, congress, CAN-SPAM has been around for how long now? anyone notice a difference? Gmail does more to can my spam than any government ass could do anyday.
Wouldn't it be funny if there was a SPAM lobby that was paying fat sacks of cash money to sentaors and congressmen to "inform" them as to the benefits of SPAM? 'if we don't spam peoeple, we will be a country of small penis-ed, non-working-at-home, erectile dysfunctioned, people WITHOUT FREE IPODS!'
and the man on the tape said that they'd suffocate, if the sharks would stop swimming in circles.
The purpose of the CAN-SPAM act wasn't to stop spam, it was to legitimize spam sent by the DMA and its members. ...but make it easier to filter out.
I don't know whether the DMA mebers are complying or not. Most spam is still sent from outside the DMA's members. So we sure can't turn off our bayesian spam filters.
The theory was that the US would crack down on those people, who according to TFA are right here in the US, leaving us with just the easily-filterable DMA-approved ads.
That hasn't happened yet, perhaps because the FBI has more important things on its mind (i.e. terrorism). I can't imagine that the DMA is happy, because their actual sales pitches are getting lost among the scams, phishes, and frauds.
I'll worry about how evil the DMA is once I stop getting 92 spams a day for C$ALIS.
So far, so good.Dude, you have nothing to worry about as long as the DMA can pay lobbyists.How did you get their addresses?No. It isn't about quantity.
It's about unsolicitated commercial ads.
If 10,000 people have personally contacted you looking for Product X, and you personally reply to those 10,000 people saying that you have Product X in stock, that would be fine.Nope. It's quite easy as a matter of fact.
The key is HOW the addresses you are sending to are obtained.
In a legitimate, non-spam business, they will be obtained by those people giving you their email addresses and expecting to receive emails from you.
In a spam business, emails are harvested and/or purchased in bulk.
All that the US needs to do is to define non-spam as email sent by a company that you have provided your info to and for that company to have a record of that (your IP address, your email address, the web page/domain you were at when you provided it).
Anything else is spam.
No "affiliates", no "partners", no one other than that one company you provided the information to.
Legitimate companies will not have a problem with this. Give them 6 months to update their mailing lists to meet the new criteria.
Spammers (and companies using them) are the only ones that will be affected by this.
This is very bad news for all those legitimate banks that purchase email leads from spammers, but I really don't give a rat's ass about whether they like it or not. I'm tired of getting mortgage spam and I'm tired of people saying that their email was flagged as spam just because they were discussing their mortgage options with their bank.
Before "CAN-SPAM", the various states would pass their own anti-spam laws.
... one worthless Federal law that trumps all of the state laws.
Some states had really good (anti-spammer) laws.
Some didn't.
So the DMA lobbied the government to deal with the "problem" of different states having different laws.
The end result