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Australian Rules to Crackdown on Spam
siffty writes "Internet service providers could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose email sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority ( ACMA Media Release ) today registered the world's first legislative code of practice for internet and email service providers.
Dealing with unsolicited email or spam costs business and home internet users millions of dollars each year in wasted time and upgrading security systems.
But under the new code, ISPs will have to offer spam filtering options to subscribers and provide a system of handling complaints.
They will also have to impose reasonable limits on the rate at which subscribers can send email."
How do they know the percentage of Australian spam if they don't know the total amount of spam?
The AU government will get spammed with products on how to crack down on spam.
Life is not for the lazy.
It could be worse. They could emulate the USA's "CAN-SPAM" act, where there are no civil penalties, the criminal penalties take the FBI to actually care, and it's literally OK to spam until the victim whines, then you get to keep spamming for three more days, and after that you can't send that particular spam message again.
It's as if you can grab a passerby, open their legs, and when they say no, you still get to thrust without penalty for three more days. After the three days, if you catch them on another street (use a different email address for them) or you change your clothes (send them a different spam from a different throwaway company address) you get to start all over again.
This is stupid. It won't do anything against spam sent by spamming criminals who use arrays of trojaned zombies, which are the most prominent source of spam.
I thought Australian's iconic sports is forcing players to cut down on fatty food.
Got Game/Music/Movie? In NZ? Swap Them Here
But here in the US, we need to have something which actually works. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) wrote the law - in order to guarantee opt-in wasn't a premise because they didn't believe it to be "financially viable option" translated: if we can't ensure our ability to make money, it's its a bad thing. Those who have been interviewed about the issue and have been willing to discuss it have admitted it left a long skid mark.
I can pull up the cite if someone wants it.
If spam legislation is supposed to work, why do we get more? It can't be because we don't click on the opt-out list. Those are a crock. I've seen some which do nothing more than display text files which say, "Thanks!" and an error is produced because they didn't know what they were doing with VBScript under ASP.
> I'm wondering if this would have gone ahead if Telstra was still owned by the Government. They're our biggest ISP.
51.8% of Telstra is owned by the Australia Government, that gives them the majority share.
The quote only really makes sense if it means that 1% of all email sent in Australia is spam, not that 1% of spam is Australian.
It's so badly worded it could mean anything though...
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
(I previously posted this on zdnet.com.au)
What I don't understand is section 8.1: "ISPs directly responsible for the allocation of IP addresses to their subscribers (eg, all of them) will use all reasonable efforts to retain information pertaining to those allocations for a minimum period of seven days."
Can someone tell me what this has got to do with spam? Isn't this just a case of our privacy being thrown out the window but disguising it within a "spam act"?
7 days is a bit of a joke.. what this means in reality is that ISP's will now have to store your account name, IP address and logon-logoff times in a db. Sounds to me like law enforcement want more evidence available for either prosecution or spying.
Now, 1,000 messages a day should far exceed the needs of 99% of the legitimate home users out there.
The problem with rate limits is that there are a few people who will have a legitimate need to send more than 1,000 messages a day, every day.
And the ISP costs go up once any of their tech support people have to answer a phone because your joke of the day list is being blocked after 1,000 sendings.
There's no easy way around this. Somewhere, someone is going to have to pay money to start solving this problem.
I don't know about you, but here's what I want:
#1. No one sending me ads if I haven't, personally, given you my email address.
#2. When I opt out, you drop me from all further ads and "informational" mailings. You only send me my invoice and my shipping notification.
#3. You send me, once a month/quarter/year, a notification that I am on your list so that I may change my address or opt out at that point. This is very helpful if I am an email admin and I'm trying to be nice and opt-out people who are no longer at the company.
Now, what the advertisers want is:
A. A list of people that they can send ads to, cheaper than snail mail.
B. See A.
So, looking at it in that fashion, you can see why there is a problem.
If the legitimate retailers would just start behaving like legitimate retailers, a big chunk of the spam problem would vanish. But they won't.
The other complicating factor is the efforts over the last decade to sell off the government communications infrastucture, which has been complicated by appointing management that refuses to work for the shareholders and directors and keeps on importing more and more of his friends to divide up the corpse of the government communications infrastructure. As a result even the infrastructure in Estonia - which is actually building stuff as distinct from Australia - is edging furthur ahead and regulation is getting weird and counterproductive. For $200 per month and less than 15km from the CBD of a state capital you would expect better than 1500/256kbs to be available to a business site in a major industrial park - but more would require the mostly government corporation (Telstra) to upgrade their exchange and perhaps even add in more lines.
The Prime Minister, John Howard, used spam provided by his son's company in the last election campaign. Unsoliticated email was sent containing Liberal Party election material to voters.
3 89.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200408/s1186
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They will eventually get the ISPs under the government's thumb. Whether it be through direct laws requiring certain filtering features or through oversight-free regulation via governmental agencies, they will succumb.
This regulation was primarily developed by Australia's Internet Industry Association (which is made up of ISPs), working together with the Australian Government. The IIA have made it clear that this was primarily their work, as part of their spam-fighting measures. So, the Government is not "getting the ISPs under their thumb", this was just a way to codify best-practices, and ensure that all ISPs adhere to them.
The code of practice seems pretty fair to me. The only that could affect customers would be the mailing limits, and this would only be an issue if you were running a high-volume mailing list. But if this is the case, it would probably be courteous to inform the ISP anyway, and I'm sure that they could remove the limits on mail sending if you had a legitimate reason why you needed to send large volumes of mail.
How about a law that requires up to date anti-virus software on everyone's computer. Granted, enforcement would be a bitch, but hear me out on this one..
:)
Judging from the customers that come through the door and the complaints, a good.. 75-80% of spam seems to originate not from one person sending out massive emails.. but rather trojan zombie computers. 300 compromised computers on a high speed connection of any kind, sending a small volume of spam mail make a significantly bigger impact than one uncompromised machine at a spammer's house sending out email.
Ok.. now you may shred this idea up
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
It's just a slow news week is all. The Australian government regularly does stupid things, it's just this week it got noticed by the press.
Most of it never eventuates because Howard does a backflip once he's reminded that 80% of the Australian people think he's a twit.