US Web Firm Described As "Phantom Registrar" Haven

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Martin Heller directs attention to ongoing investigations of more than 40 phantom registrars linked to The Directi Group, including PDR, one of the 10 worst offenders on the Net. According to KnujOn, an additional 19,000 domains advertised through spam have been hiding their ownership behind PrivacyProtect.org, which The Washington Post has outed as Directi-owned. Directi claims it suspends illicit domains, but KnujOn provides documentation suggesting that Directi reports the registrars suspended and then reinstates them at another IP address. 'There has been some outcry about all this from the ICANN At-Large Committee, but as of this writing there has been no response from ICANN's Tim Cole,' Heller writers. 'Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that LogicBoxes, a Directi-owned registrar, has sponsored ICANN meetings in L.A. and Delhi.' Directi has since issued an official response to the allegations."

Comments

Another scumbag registrar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shocking.

Re:FP

[doyoulikegoatseeee]

you misspelled pantom

The Reason This Will Never End

[imyy4u3]

Quite simply, even if they shut Directi down, another company will take over the job of hiding the spammers for one simple reason: money. The spammers can afford to pay a company to hide them because they are making bank. Amazingly, about 1% of all spam emails actually result in a sale! So if you send out 1,000,000 emails, you can expect 10,000 sales! If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.

Now on the other hand, why do we even bother to try to pass spamming laws? Talk about another waste of time and money. If we pass a law saying all spam email must contain the words "unsolicited email" in the subject line, everyone will set their servers to block such email and therefore the spammers will certainly not put that in the subject line. So now we have to spend even more money to try and track the spammers down, which in essence we can't do because they pay companies like Directi money to hide their domains, IPs, etc.

Bottom line, this is an endless loop, and if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[thermian]

If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.

And if people stopped eating burgers, no-one would be fat. Alas you cannot stop large numbers of people doing things just because you think they're being stupid, the world doesn't work like that.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Bottom line, this is an endless loop, and if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.

Well, if you can create anti-spam laws, why not create a law prohiting credit card companies to make payments on products / companies which have used spam to addvertise their products or services. Thus there would not be any money for
spamming.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[thbigr]

I like spam. If you are not going to eat yours can I have it?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[thbigr]

I agree, you prohibition never works. Laws against speeding don't work.

Why murder has been illegal for thousands of years, and it still continues.

What are we going to do??

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Tuoqui]

I do... execute them.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.

And if people stopped eating burgers, no-one would be fat.

You're an idiot. Seriously.

Please don't post here anymore.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's try the 2-for-1 solution; legalize the murder of spammers!

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

I like spam. If you are not going to eat yours can I have it?

Noooo! Get away from my precious! *quietly munches on SPAM in the corner*

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Bottom line, this is an endless loop, and if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.

1. Make all advertisement, solicitation, marketing, etc , etc via email illegal. No exceptions.
2. Institute a mass anti-spam campaign across the media, educating people about what to expect and what to do.
3. Prosecute spammers.
4. Prosecute people who buy from spammers.

Personally, I think step 4 is the option that will have the most effect. The more people who are responding to spam that get jail the better.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[CautionaryX]

Look, its not that people are eating burgers, fried chicken, cheesecake, etc. It's that most Americans don't get enough physical activity every day to burn up excess calories.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[wisty]

Fine. Vigilante action. We DoS the fuck out of any companies advertised by spammers. Sure, spammers could *theoretically* spam for innocent (competitor) companies, but I'm not worried about a bit of collateral damage. The harm-vs-benefit of being in a spam email will move towards zero, at which point nobody pays for spammers any more. Which is what we were trying to achieve.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Decriminalize murder. It will cut costs significantly.

Same thing with drugs. Legalize them all. That will cut the profit motive and reduce crime, as well as reduce police/prosecution/incarceration costs.

Prostitution? Same thing. Why is it illegal?

Most of the laws in this country are stupid.

Vote Libertarian.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

it also isn't as bad if the spam makes sense. I long for the days of old when spam was readable.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[BlackBloq]

It's called jail time and it works quite well.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[U121]

I rather think the best way would be to only do step #2.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Armakuni]

That one percent of all spam emails should result in a sale seems too high an estimate. I have usually seen estimates between 0,01 and 0,5 percent, which is still pretty high.

Most legit websites selling something are hard pressed to get past the 3 percent mark, and that is with an audience that's usually interested in the goods offered, so-called targeted traffic.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Name and shame the directors of Directi. If I can't identify the spammer, I sure would like to know who gave the spammer the tools to ply his trade.

I doubt I am alone. From their website:

Bhavin Turakhia - Founder, CEO & Chairman - formed the company in 1998 when he was just 19.
Divyank Turakhia - Co-Founder, President & Director

According to their site, the company is now worth $300 million. Some of that profit came from the misery they have helped to spread through the Internet. Let them know what you think about it.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Angostura]

Someone has modded you insightful, but just have a look at point 1:

Make all advertisement, solicitation, marketing, etc , etc via email illegal. No exceptions.

My 2 year old daughter is having a birthday party. Can I tell people about it and mention what particularly cheap gifts she might like?

Preposterous - Of course I can - you didn't mean that.

OK. How about her pre-school who is holding a Christmas fair, entry 50p. Can I mail the parents of the children? The local newspapers?

Of course - you didn't mean that.

What about if I forward a Red-cross chain main asking for donations following the destruction of Hurricane Hannah. Of course, that's OK.

The only way this might get rid of spammers, is by convincing them that there is more money to be made in the law - arguing about the definition of solicitation, marketing and advertisement.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[volxdragon]

Bottom line, this is an endless loop, and if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.

Public floggings or stoning when they're caught.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[riggah]

why not create a law prohiting credit card companies to make payments on products / companies which have used spam to addvertise their products or services.

How exactly would that work? We're talking about something that crosses international borders; who enforces the law? How would the CC companies know when spam generated the income? When does it cross the line and, say, make income from junk snail-mail illegal to make or receive payment?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[halcyon1234]

If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.

You're right. Spamming is easy and profitable. If you take away the easy, then it will deter some spammers, but will just encourage others to find an easier route. Spammers treat legislation like damage and route around it...

The consumers, on the other hand, are a finite resource. There's only so many of them (though it doesn't seem it). They buy stuff from spammers out of ignorance, greed, lack of fear of getting scammed/harmed, or by just being a chump.

But they wouldn't if there was enough compelling education out there to show that purchasing spammed products is harmful to your health. Think about any food recall in recent times, from e. coli tomatoes to Listeriosis contaminated deli-meats. The harm-to-humans is often very, very low-- a dozen or two at the most-- but the public reaction against the product is immediate and massive. DON'T EAT THAT MEAT! People will wrap themselves in unjustly paranoid levels of caution over what amounts to a statistically tiny chance of something happening to them.

So the trick to stopping spam is to get rid of the customers. And the trick to getting rid of the customers is to, well, get rid of them.

Legislation doesn't work because if you get rid of one spammer, ten more pop up. But it is possible to track down a spammer. Pick a few good-sized spammers. Hire a mercenary company to track them down, kill them (painfully or not, depending on your budget), and seize their customer list. Then mail out to every customer a free sample of V!@GREA. Except instead of the blue pill, you ship out blue-colored cyanide pills. Bam, hundreds to thousands of customers dead in an instant. Then you leak to the media that they were all customers of spam. Let the media hype it up in the way they do best, and within a day you'll have headlines everywhere that SPAMMERS ARE KILLING YOU AND YOUR FAMILY! Once the lowest common denominator gets wind that the magic blue pill from the internets will KILL THEM, they'll stop being customers.

No customers = no profit = no spam (or at least significantly reduced levels). You can then clean up the spam-stragglers with law enforcement and mercenary companies, as there won't be ten people waiting to pop up to replace them.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[mrops]

... if anyone has any REAL suggestions on how to get rid of spammers, or how to force companies to stop hiding them and their domains, I'd love to hear it.

Thats easy
Ready... Aim... fire...

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

What if someone were to blow up the Directi building? Now before people go off on calling me a terrorist, it could be done at night when people aren't there working. It doesn't even have to totally destroy the building, just do enough damage to make Directi think twice before harboring the unsavory.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[afidel]

Better yet legalize removing their customers from the gene pool....

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[russotto]

Well, if you can create anti-spam laws, why not create a law prohiting credit card companies to make payments on products / companies which have used spam to addvertise their products or services.

There are any number of problems with this (where's that standard form), but susceptibility to joe jobs is probably #1. The day after this law passed, the Microsoft dirty tricks division would spam for Apple, Coke and Pepsi would spam for each other, and a good number of Linux fans would spam for Microsoft.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[russotto]

Sure, spammers could *theoretically* spam for innocent (competitor) companies, but I'm not worried about a bit of collateral damage.

Then you are an anti-spam fanatic, and have probably had an anti-spam filter blocking /0 on your email for some time.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[AvitarX]

I am shocked that 1% even make it to an inbox personally.

Do you have a citation that 1% result in a sale?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[erroneus]

It is not a waste to make anti-spam laws. Without laws you cannot put them in jail. Frankly, the extent that spammer go through to push their crap, they are already in violation of various other laws related to intrusion and security evasion. (Actually, there may not be a law related to willfully evading security measures, but there should be... it would be the electronic equivalent to breaking and entering.) In any case, the more charges that can be racked up against perpetrators the better.

And frankly, any company found to be doing business with spammers should be punished as well. All the crybaby "I didn't know! He claimed to be legitimate!" stuff will not fly after all these years of spam. If you know what email is, then you already know what spam is. At the very least, they should be investigated and possibly fined. And if they are outside of the US jurisdiction, there are other ways to handle them... (and no, I don't mean label them as terrorist and invade their country.)

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet legalize removing their customers from the gene pool....

1) Send spam to 100 million email addresses advertising pharmaceuticals
2) Send poison pills to everybody who responds
3) PROFIT!!!!
4) Gene pool cleaned!!!!
5) ??????

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2 year old daughter is having a birthday party. Can I tell people about it and mention what particularly cheap gifts she might like?

Maybe the people that are invited and likely to show up. I don't want email about your daughter's party.

OK. How about her pre-school who is holding a Christmas fair, entry 50p. Can I mail the parents of the children? The local newspapers?

Of course - you didn't mean that.

What about if I forward a Red-cross chain main asking for donations following the destruction of Hurricane Hannah.

Neither of these is okay in an unsolicited email.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[daemonburrito]

Spammers treat legislation like damage and route around it...

That's actually pretty interesting. When I use the "route" quote, I'm thinking of the internet as full of useful free expression and accurate data. But the miasma routes around damage, too.

The rest of your comment is pretty far off of the mark, but that sentence is something.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[DavidTC]

The problem isn't that laws against spam are not tough enough. As you correctly point out, almost all spammers could be arrested on things besides antispam laws.

As for enforcement, with the resources of random people, spammers may be hard to track down, but with the resources of law enforcement, they are laughable easy. Seriously. It's like hiding evidence of criminal activity in a safe in your house. Yeah, it's hard for a random person to get that stuff, but how long, exactly, do you think that would stand up to a warrant?

The problem is that the Federal government castrated state antispam laws, and then doesn't bother enforcing the ones at Federal level. It is purely a political issue.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Macthorpe]

Absolutely impossible, of course, that a rival company could send spam advertising for one of their competitors and use the completely reasonable revenge tactics you just espoused to trick you into knocking them off the internet.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Dishevel]

Brilliant! Great Idea. We should use this again. It will surely work as well on this as it did in the (Now Completely Won) War On Drugs .....

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Macthorpe]

My bad, I just realised that you covered that in your post and you just don't care.

Fair enough.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Hordeking]

1. Make all advertisement, solicitation, marketing, etc , etc via email illegal. No exceptions. 2. Institute a mass anti-spam campaign across the media, educating people about what to expect and what to do. 3. Prosecute spammers. 4. Prosecute people who buy from spammers.

Personally, I think step 4 is the option that will have the most effect. The more people who are responding to spam that get jail the better.

1. Define marketing
2. Try to keep your footing as you tumble down the slippery slope.

Catching spammers is pretty hard. Doable, but not very practical.

Prosecute the people who buy from them? Isn't this a bit like prosecuting someone prosecuting the victim? Or being retarded? If someone gets ripped off by a con-man or a business, we don't prosecute him. While part of the problem is that victims make themselves available, it doesn't solve the problem to punish them (it's also not terribly efficient to track down Joe Blow to the construction site where he works because he fell for the email promising free XXX while his wife is away, if only he gives his credit card.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[BronsCon]

1) Make buying from or replying to spam illegal.

2) Send government-sponsored spam for a couple years, to catch those who buy the shit.

3) ...

4) Prof...uh... No more profit for spammers!

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[BronsCon]

Without #4, those who ignore those of us who know better when we attempt to educate them will also ignore #2.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

If all spam is shutdown, there will be a lot of loney people in the world.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[corbettw]

If only there were a form that might demonstrate the futility of nearly any anti-spam device or measure....

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[corbettw]

Yes, the War on Drugs has worked tremendously well, let's try the same approach with spam. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[rbunker]

Simply having it cost one cent per addressee to send an email, the funds to be used for upgrades to the MAEs, would end it right away. And I don't really imagine it would bother any of us to pay a penny per email.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

The spammers can afford to pay a company to hide them because they are making bank.

Sounds like they have reason to start throwing the heads of these companies into jail thanks to newer spam laws. If they want to "make bank", then let them try to do it from inside a jail cell. Hopefully more will commit suicide.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Belial6]

It's not that Americans don't get enough physical activity either. The biggest problem is that one solution is trying to be assigned to every metabolism. A big one I see is that people are recommended to eat a 90% sugar diet. As you say, some people don't get enough exercise, but that certainly isn't THE reason people are fat. Then there is the skewed definition of "over weight" and "obese" by the BMI. The numbers shown in the BMI can be down right dangerous.

There are some people who's weight is primarily controlled by exercise. My wife is like that. It doesn't matter what she eats; a few days at the gym and she starts dropping weight. Some people's weight is primarily controlled by diet. This is how I am. When I get exercise, I don't burn up fat. I only build muscle. From a real health aspect, that is still good, but from an external view, as well as what is defined by the BMI, I become fatter, and thus more and more over weight. Even worse for the 'one true way' of weight loss, I pack on fat if I eat sugar. This include whole grains, fruits and many vegetables. For me, the only thing that makes me lose weight is to eat a primarily carnivorous high fat diet. That's right. If I don't get enough fat in my diet, I start putting on weight. Of course, there are also people that need a low fat diet, and people that need exercise and a change in diet.

We will never seen the weight 'problem' disappear until we stop using a crappy 19th century mathematician's chart to determine proper health, and stop thinking that everyone's body functions in the exact same way. We don't prescribe the same medicine to everyone. Ingesting the same medication can save one mans life, while the same medicine can kill another. Why would we think that the same diet and exercise plan would work exactly the same on everybody?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Jimmy_B]

Amazingly, about 1% of all spam emails actually result in a sale! So if you send out 1,000,000 emails, you can expect 10,000 sales! If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.

Who told you that, a spammer? 1% is about the percentage of spam emails that make it through filters and into someone's inbox. Given the enormous quantity and consistently low quality of spam, I'm not convinced it's producing any sales at all. You see, spammers don't have to make sales to make money; they only need to convince gullible merchants to pay them to spam. Stopping the tiny handful of people who buy from spam wouldn't achieve anything.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Mister Whirly]

Really, 1% of SPAM results in a sale? Because I have had literally thousands of SPAM ads sent to me, and so far I have resisted purchasing even 1 single product from them. But according to you, I should be buying one product for every 100 emails offers I receive. But I may be an exception because my p3n1s isn't small, and I don't need to buy any prescription drugs online....

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Mister Whirly]

Yes because everyone knows that overreacting with deadly force to a relatively minor crime is ALWAYS the solution. Now would everyone please join my campaign to have jaywalkers drawn and quartered?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Mister Whirly]

# 4 has worked wonderfully on the War on Drugs (or should I say the War On Drugs That Huge Pharmaceuticals Don't Profit From). All we had to do was let out all the violent criminals to make room for the casual drug users. I say let the rapists back out into the streets and lock up the people who buy things from spammers!!

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Mister Whirly]

"What if someone were to blow up the Directi building?

They would clean up on insurance, and move into a nicer, bigger building. Any other questions?

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Raistlin77]

Yep, worked on Prostitution as well!

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Mister Whirly]

No it wouldn't. Most SPAM are sent from zombie networks, not by computers owned by legitimate individuals. Open relays and trojans are what makes spam possible. All that would result is that grandma would receive a bill for $87,000 for all the "emails" her computer has sent out.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[rbunker]

No it wouldn't. Most SPAM are sent from zombie networks, not by computers owned by legitimate individuals. Open relays and trojans are what makes spam possible. All that would result is that grandma would receive a bill for $87,000 for all the "emails" her computer has sent out.

Except that of course grandma would have a monthly credit limit of $25 on her account.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[billcopc]

You mean like how you can be flagged as a terrorist organization if you sold meat that went into a suicide bomber's sandwich ?

The legal and privacy ramifications of what you're suggesting are very good reasons NOT to follow that path. I hate spammers as much as the next guy, but I'm cynical enough to know that more legislation is not going to solve the problem.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Penguinoflight]

Your first 3 propositions are not unsolicited; in each situation, the group is well defined. The last is completely unsolicited, it doesn't really matter if their end is touchy-feely, they are still engaging in spam.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[billstewart]

You have proposed a [blah blah blah checklist here...]

1. - Sorry, there's plenty of legitimate email advertising, solicitation, and marketing - as long as the recipient has actually asked for it. And much of the spam that I get is already illegal, such as bank-account phishing and Nigerian scams.

2. - Suckers are born every minute, and so are new scams.

3. - It's too easy for spammers to hide, and too hard to write laws that only nail spammers and not legitimate emailers, and governments don't have jurisdiction internationally.

4. - Sorry, but that's even dumber than prosecuting drug users. If you want somebody to come in and complain that they bought Nigerian Herbal Fake Viagra from $spammer and it didn't work, arresting them for it won't make the process of admitting they were stupid easier for them. Arresting somebody who bought a worthless stock that was getting pumped and dumped isn't really helpful, plus they're not buying it directly from the spammers. And lots of the spam recently (at least from what gets through my filters) has been bank phishing, not sales - you certainly shouldn't arrest somebody for logging in to what they think is their own bank's web site.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[techno-vampire]

...a good number of Linux fans would spam for Microsoft.

I can foresee something much, much worse. Imagine a bunch of One True Distro Linux fanbois (We all know a few, don't we?) spamming in the name of some other, hated distro. Gentoo fanatics sending out Slackware spam, Ubuntu users spamming in the name of Fedora, Damned Small Linux lovers sending out Puppy Linux spam. Oh the horror! Oh the humanity! Oh tempora, oh more! Oh, the spam-filled inboxes!

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[gad_zuki!]

1% sounds unusually high to me. When companies do direct marketing with new and sale items they dont usually hit 1%.

When I examine our spam here at work I see a lot what looks like spam but has download links to trojans or links to webpages full of client-side exploits. The difference between spammers and hackers seems to have disappeared.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[darkpixel2k]

If people would just stop buying shit from spam emails, this wouldn't be a problem.

And if people stopped eating burgers, no-one would be fat. Alas you cannot stop large numbers of people doing things just because you think they're being stupid, the world doesn't work like that.

'people stop buying from spam emails==no more spam' is not the same as 'people stop eating burgers==no more fat people'.

It's more like 'people stop eating burgers==burger joints go out of business'.

You are an idiot.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[darkpixel2k]

How exactly would that work? We're talking about something that crosses international borders; who enforces the law? How would the CC companies know when spam generated the income? When does it cross the line and, say, make income from junk snail-mail illegal to make or receive payment?

Visa and Master Card are pretty much everywhere. Get them to setup a few 'spam traps' and start tracking down these spam companies. The next step is to disable any cards the company has, followed by refusing to authorize payments to those companies from any customer. When the money dries up, the spammers will move on to the next big money-making scheme.

I'm guessing all the spammers were originally 'miracle-cure' salesmen like that dude from Pete's Dragon. When everyone caught on to his sham, he moved to the internet to sell penis enlargment cream. (Which by odd coincidence contains powdered dragon scales...)

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

Well,

there is another way to look at this. Calories in > Calories out == weight gain. Calories in = calories out == maintenance and the last one calories in calories out == weight loss.

The type of food and amount of activity needed to obtain these ratios will vary from one person to another, but that is more a matter of compliance and calories restriction/increased activity that is done.

A small person who increases their activity with a low basal calorie intake may accomplish a lot with exercise whereas a heavy relatively active person will see slim return likely secondary to a higher calorie requirement at baseline.

Bottom line is that its not really the diet that you choose to lose weight, but the reduction in calories.

There are secondary considerations that need to be taken into account - which if you see a physician will be brought up - including hypertension, diabetes and serum cholesterol.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Belial6]

Your are absolutely wrong. If your body was made of one substance, and deposited all calories into a single shared pool, you would be right. Of course, that is not how a human body is designed. It has thousands of parts, and the calories you take in go to different places. This means that it is possible to kill yourself by using your 'simple' equation for weight lose. It also makes the exercise increasingly difficult if your body is sequestering the calories as fat, and refusing to release the fat back out as energy to use for exercise. So, basically, your comment isn't even a half truth. More like a 10th truth, and thus just wrong.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[rtechie]

My 2 year old daughter is having a birthday party.

You really don't know how the law works do you?

I'll give you a hint: ALL law enforcement is selective.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[rtechie]

We're talking about something that crosses international borders; who enforces the law?

Extradition to the countries willing to enforce the law. If the nation refuses extradition, you send in kidnappers to simply grab or kill them. This is exactly what we do with drug dealers and arms dealers.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

I beg to differ and site conservation of energy as my reason. Something tells me that you have flaws in your notion of how a body is designed. The calories you take in are from component chemicals - carbohydrates generally provide 4 calories per gram, fat 9, protein 4, alcohol 7calories/gram. All bodily activities from your basal metabolic rate (energy burn for homeostasis at rest) to exercise require energy provided by these substances. If the total energy expenditure in sum exceeds intake YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT. This is a fundamental principle. I don't know what you mean by its "possible to kill yourself by using your 'simple' equation", but starvation does cause death my friend. If your body "refuses" to release fat for energy use that would indeed make exercise difficult. There is usually a delay between your body releasing fat and its utilization, but it does happen. Anything else would be a fairly horrendous disease - see lysosomal storage diseases for more info. Moreover, failure to release basic fats would likely lead to very early death as it would be necessary in pretty much any fasting state.

take a quick look at the wiki page on cardiac muscle and look at the basal energy useage - its fat.

The distribution of the food between compartments of the body is irrelevant to this basic concept that occurs in everyone and all energy consuming systems. Compartment models are only relevant when assessing quantities within one compartment - say serum potassium levels. Intake and output are only part of the equation. most body potassium lies intracellularly and thus movement into and out of this compartment must be accounted for.

I suggest that before you claim someone is "absolutely wrong", you should know the subject matter a bit better.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Belial6]

Then I challenge you to prove your point. For the next year, ingest nothing but 2000 calories of alcohol. We will see if you survive the year. After all, you are claiming that your body uses all foods in the same way, and all we have to do is count the number of calories in and out.

There are thousands of data points all around us showing that you are wrong. You can keep your head in the sand all you want, but if all it took was eating less and exercising more, very few people would be fat.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Belial6]

Sorry, make that 2000 calories of alcohol a day.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

I never claimed that you can choose anyone type of intake - only that reducing calories intake below consumption was required - as in necessary - not sufficient. Nor did I elaborate on any safe way to accomplish this task. And I do believe I made the claim of the heart specifically preferring fatty acids in my grandparent post. and the statement "all it took" is as much an oversimplification as any other. Calorie restriction is not an easy thing to do, and I never claimed that it was. Diversity of intake is a prerequisite to avoid a long list of diseases related to malnutrition such as kwashiorkor, beri-beri, scurvey, marasmus, rickets, osteomalcia, etc. I am not sure what point you are trying to make here to be honest. Personally, it seems you are just being argumentative, but I will stick with my original point - to lose weight, calories in must be less than calories out. Other issues of nutrition not withstanding.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

Let me ask you this, when someone says "eat less", how does that translate to "drink only alcohol"?
anyway, you wanted information on calorie restriction, here you go:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/1/43 - shows equivalence of various diets though attrition rates do vary. Overall one of the best studies of its type currently available in the medical literature.

a small study showing benefits of calorie restriction.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18602635?ordinalpos=7&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

on the following page about Atkins, please take a look at the section on ketones and increased calorie loss - which balances the higher calorie intake.
http://www.publix.com/wellness/notes/Display.do?id=Diet&childId=Atkins_Diet

In all the diets studied, there is either a change in metabolism enabling increased energy (calorie) loss or there is a limit on its intake.

bottom line - energy must be conserved, the actual diet itself appears to be less meaningful in how it is achieved. Also, please don't assume I mean all diets provide alternative necessary nutrients to maintain a healthy life.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. Apparently more exercise = more hunger = eats more. Because of this, exercise isn't nearly as important as a good diet.

Still, burgers aren't all that bad. Fried chicken and cheesecake probably are. So is soda and other 'drinkable' calories. According to the lollipop study (google it) calories consumed by drinking don't decrease appetite. So all of those sodas and juices are going straight into fat.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

Pre-school deals are OK, those are part of pre-existing relationships.

Red cross spamming people who didn't ask to be spammed is no more OK than any other spammer.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[riggah]

Extradition to the countries willing to enforce the law. If the nation refuses extradition, you send in kidnappers to simply grab or kill them. This is exactly what we do with drug dealers and arms dealers.

Drug dealers and arms dealers aren't exactly classified in the same league with spammers. Yes, the spammers use shady means and are causing harm to the backbone, but you can hardly equate a drug dealer with a spammer.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Tubal-Cain]

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (*) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
(*) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(*) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

(*) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(*) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(*) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[sjames]

there is another way to look at this. Calories in > Calories out == weight gain. Calories in = calories out == maintenance and the last one calories in calories out == weight loss.

It's not that simple. While what you say is literally true, reduced calories in = reduced metabolism = reduced calories out. For some that reduction can be extreme and leaves them with barely enough energy to think about working out, much less do it. For them, calorie restriction can be counter productive without a great deal of exercise to keep their metabolism from falling.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

well, I know I glossed over a lot of details, but that basic principle holds true across the board - and applies to methods not including calorie restriction. The actual ways to achieve these have been described by others in this discussion.

If one wanted to get into the nitty-gritty, one could also include subtleties such as timing of meals and exercise along with duration of exercise at one stretch because these all influence metabolic rates beyond the time course of their occurrence.

I just didn't think that /. was the venue for such a discussion.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Belial6]

You said:

there is another way to look at this. Calories in > Calories out == weight gain. Calories in = calories out == maintenance and the last one calories in calories out == weight loss."

Bottom line is that its not really the diet that you choose to lose weight, but the reduction in calories.

So, now your back peddling and saying that what you eat IS important. The fact is that the 'eat less, exercise more' advice is simplistic to the point of being false, not helpful, and dangerous. It is well know, and verifiable that WHAT you eat affects how your body burns calories. It also affects how many calories your body needs to burn. That's right. WHAT you eat affects how much your body has to burn. Why? Because some foods don't end up being food at all. Your body ends up passing them through your system without doing much or any digestion. Telling someone that they can lose weight by just reducing calories, no matter what they eat will lead people to things like the chocolate and vodka diet. It is dangerous, and their body is likely to start shutting down before they get any worthwhile results. Even when eating normal food, there are plenty of people who's bodies will put them to sleep for 12 hours a day before releasing the fat out of their thighs.

The statement "to lose weight, calories in must be less than calories out." is either going to be taken as it is almost always meant, which is "eat less, exercise more", which is wrong, as that does not work because of how different bodies process and uses different foods. Or you are being literal, and have made a statement no better than "To make a cake from scratch, you must first create the universe". Basically made a comment that has no relevance to any kind of practical weight loss.

I suspect that you are doing what most people who make your claim are doing. You are trying to use a play on words, where you will argue the literal wording when called to back up your claims, but will argue the lame "eat less, exercise more" when trying to put it into anything usable for weight control.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

I am willing to stand by my statement that reducing caloric intake will help in weightloss. Perhaps what I should have done is qualify it with the statement that there are other metabolic and nutritional concerns that need to be simultaneously addressed.

The essence of what I am saying is portion reduction. In other words, forgoing a shift in proportions - ie, don't overdo any one category of food in order to shift metabolism, but maintain a balance at a lower caloric intake.

an article on high protein intake
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18267211?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

You can find similar data on almost all forms of diets that take too highly from one category. If I conveyed that other concerns aren't important than I am sorry, but it still doesn't change my point of view, nor does anything that you have put forth done anything to change it. I have extensively read the medical literature on this subject and continue to do so.

I make my claim secondary to considerations of compliance with diet, outcomes measured by the use of each diet as well as the ease that each can be done.

Furthermore, I refer anyone with additional medical concerns to a nutritionist if it is necessary. I have had plenty of people report good outcomes though most continue being noncompliant with a diet.

I have also found that keeping things simple for the lay person is often necessary to ensure compliance and to ease understanding of the subject.

When working to change someones diet, you need a concrete starting point. To say that "its complicated" may not be sufficient. While saying cut calories and increase exercise may not provide sufficient information, anything more would require feedback on a one to one basis.

I have never advocated extreme diets such as Atkins though I have used them personally with success. It just does not seem to be a physiologic way to reach the desired goals of prolonging a healthy lifespan.

as for what I meant by "the diet" in that statement, I was considering established, published diets - not home grown diets, so at least I know the source of your statements, and will say that I agree with you in that "the diet" is important in that sense. My main point was what I posted later - the Jama article (reference posted earlier) that had compared a few established diets and showed similar efficacy.

If you consider this back pedaling, than so be it and thank you for clarifying this point. It just hadn't occurred to me that you were interpreting that statement in such a fashion.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Belial6]

Eat less, exercise more IS an extreme diet. As well as the high sugar low fat diet that the government and food industry pushes. Your link is to a study of people who already have kidney disease. That is no better than linking to a study of people with severe diabetes and saying that people should start shooting themselves up with insulin.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

- Eat less, exercise more IS an extreme diet.

well, it seems we have the source of our disagreement. As long as you refrain from equating "eat less" with it doesn't matter what the content of the diet is, then I have no contention.

The origin of eat less, exercise more is the fact that the majority of people that need to lose weight eat an excess calorie diet and/or have a sedentary life style. Those that do not tend to have a higher degree of secondary causes of weight gain requiring medical intervention.

I'll admit I tried to pull a fast one with that article - and I will cede that there is currently contradictory evidence both linking and showing independence of high protein in diets.

Also, can you site where you get this notion that a high sugar diet is being pushed? This is the first I am hearing of this and am genuinely interested on the source of this info. The source for a lot of what I have been taught comes from this site: http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/AppendixA.htm#appA3
which has a considerable portion of caloric intake coming from carbohydrates, but it doesn't seem to be that extreme to me.

The entire concept of what is healthy is in constant flux due to increasing understanding of metabolism and the acceptance that weight control is not the end all. Most professionals readily acknowledge this and incorporate it into their practice.

As for the food industry, they just push what they can get people to buy, but even here, I am not sure what you are getting at. Any citations/references would be useful for me.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[irtza]

ok,

I feel I need to clarify one point a bit better. - why I would pull selective research regarding high protein intake.

1 - the plethera of literature on both sides
2 - the lack of known adverse events to limiting excess protein intake in those with normal renal function and those without
3 - was being lazy (certainly not the best reasoning but the truth)

your counterpoint saying this is equivalent to giving everyone insulin is off base in that it is already known that limited (note - not low, but limited) protein intake is not harmful to the body, so deducing if excess is harmful proves nothing to the counterpoint. Exogenous insulin administration in nondiabetics is known to be harmful - not equivalent cases.

a better illustration of your point may be sun exposure and saying excess sun exposure in Caucasians is harmful, and limiting sun exposure in those with darker skin (which would increase the risk of osteoporosis). That is why I cede that point, but as of now, I doubt there is harm to any specific population by imposing a reasonable limit on protein consumption.

btw, is there a venue to continue this discussion outside of slashdot (I normally don't post on boards this long)? I am interesting in getting more information on your point of view on this topic and why you hold such views, but feel this is a bit much to continue posting on /.

Re:The Reason This Will Never End

[Anonymous Coward]

1% really? I'm in the wrong business.

Capitalism + Anonymity = Total F^ckwad

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of that one PVP cartoon, except replace normal person with capitalism.

Anything to make a buck..

Re:FP

[thbigr]

Are you serious?

It could end if we

[AP31R0N]

Make sending unsolicited mail slightly criminal. Say, one minute in prison per recipient. 1M spams would be 695 days in jail.

Spam and viruses cost people money that they could have spent elsewhere. When a company buys a spam filter and hires people to run it, that's money that could have been profit or could have been spent on something useful to the company. Maybe that budget could go to making the health insurance a bit cheaper. Or give the receptionists a raise. Put a foosball table in the break room. 1K$/year is 1K$/year too much to spend on something you never wanted. Spammers are making people/companies/agencies throw away time and money. The only way to not get spam is to not have an address.

Hell, make it the penalty the sum of the amount other peoples time they wasted, 1 second per recipient. Even that would get people to think twice.

Alas, the spam from outside the US and extradition friendly countries would not be unabated, but it would be something.

Maybe such a law would be wrong/unethical, but it would give us some kind of satisfaction. i don't know, i'm speaking mostly out of frustration here. When i was a sys admin dealing with spam was a frustrating waste of my time and the time of my users.

Any law grokkers on hand to tell us what laws and penalties are in place?

Re:It could end if we

[bryce4president]

Spam is kind of like me going and vandalizing someone's business. It wastes their resources and causes them losses, and I would be sent to jail for it.

Why aren't we sending the FBI out to these physical locations in the US where these companies are located, or their servers reside and pulling the plugs and cuffing the owners? I want to know how a company like Atrivo can operate in the US for years and nothing be done? How is this possible? Who is in charge? Who needs to lose their job?

Re:It could end if we

[Anonymous Coward]

I HATE this idea. Please never propose laws to "solve" the "SPAM problem".

CAPTCHAs on the RECIPIENT server solves the problem of unsolicited messages. No bulk messaging plan would be economically viable when faced with millions of CAPTCHAs, especially if each CAPTCHA has a lot of random variations (not only in the letter and number choices, but in the *nature* of the CAPTCHA challenge -- like word problems, image identification problems, etc).

Related: Spamhaus statement re Atrivo/Intercage

[McDutchie]

On a related note, Spamhaus recently issued this statement about Atrivo/Intercage, US-based persistent criminal spammer hosts. In the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, Steve Linford of Spamhaus indicated they made this statement because they are highly frustrated with law enforcement's inaction.

Re:Related: Spamhaus statement re Atrivo/Intercage

[Anonymous Coward]

On a related note, Spamhaus recently issued this statement about Atrivo/Intercage, US-based persistent criminal spammer hosts. In the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, Steve Linford of Spamhaus indicated they made this statement because they are highly frustrated with law enforcement's inaction.

Uhh, that was detailed in the second half of the InfoWorld article.

Interesting

[setrops]

"Other Online reports further claim that these 48 registrars are involved in illicit activities.
This allegation is made without providing ANY evidence to corroborate the same. This statement is grossly inaccurate. The reporters did not bother to support such claims with any factual evidence, nor contacted us for clarification"

So it's inaccurate. Which part? The number of registrars or the illicit activities portion?

Re:Interesting

[Mister Whirly]

They actually have 49 registrars involved in illicit activities.

Send the tax collectors

[GaryOlson]

Al Capone was prosecuted and imprisoned because he failed to pay his taxes. Use the same tactic on spammers. Subpoena the customer list of these registrars under conspiracy to avoid taxation. Then audit the taxes of all the domain owners.

These types of registrars and domain owners will no longer have a viable business if the expense of avoiding the government is too high. This would also be a useful method of giving lawyers something to do and stop bothering us normal people (with NewYorkCountryLawyer as an exception of course).

Re:Send the tax collectors

[Inominate]

Subpoena the customer list of these registrars under conspiracy to avoid taxation. Then audit the taxes of all the domain owners.

This, along with the lists going into public records could kill off the penis pill spam completely, even if nobody got prosecuted.

Re:Send the tax collectors

[russotto]

Al Capone was prosecuted and imprisoned because he failed to pay his taxes. Use the same tactic on spammers. Subpoena the customer list of these registrars under conspiracy to avoid taxation. Then audit the taxes of all the domain owners.

Well, there are a few issues here. First of all, you need a bit of evidence to get such a subpoena. Second, it's quite possible the spammers themselves are out of US jurisdiction. Third, it's also possible (though not likely) they are paying taxes.

Re:Send the tax collectors

[pbhj]

"Mr V.I. Agra" is going to get a lot of subpoena's.

Seriously, how many of those domains have bona fide registration details? You're going to need to track international bank transfers from the Soviet Block (Eastern Europe), Nigeria, etc..

Re:Send the tax collectors

[Mister Whirly]

Except for the fact that unless you have a brick and mortar location in a state as well, internet sales do not need to charge state taxes on purchases.

Re:Send the tax collectors

[cawpin]

I think that's part of the point. The real problem here is the registrars that knowingly host spammers. It is already illegal to have falsified registrant information. If they are allowing it, prosecute them or just suspend them from any further sales and suspend all current hosted accounts.

Re:Send the tax collectors

[cawpin]

He was prosecuted for not paying INCOME taxes. It has nothing to do with sales tax. Since this registrar is in the US, it is possible.

Re:Send the tax collectors

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

So once the expense of avoiding the government gets too high, then what? They won't just give up. They'll move to another country, right?

Re:Send the tax collectors

[techno-vampire]

Subpoena the customer list of these registrars under conspiracy to avoid taxation.

Good idea, wrong terminology. "Tax avoidance" is using deductions, tax shelters and so on to lower the amount of tax you're liable for. What you're thinking of is "tax evasion." Back in the 1920s (I think) there was a Supreme Court ruling that "tax avoidance is not tax evasion." That's right, they actually tried to prosecute somebody for using legal means to lower his taxes and it took SCOTUS to say "NO" and make it stick.

Use the information against the spammers?

[Seriph]

I've been doing some digging into this over the last few months and noticed an awful lot of spamvertized sites seem to have their domains registered with such privacy protecting registrars.

I've been thinking about how to use the fact that a domain is registered with such a registrar as part of a spam scoring metric and whether anyone else has already done work on this? Just on the mail passing through my systems, I'm seeing a very strong correlation between a mail being spam and it referring to a domain registered with such a registrar, with the domain nameservers being on dynamic IP space, and with the DNS for the spam domain having a very low TTL value set.

It's also interesting to track back the nameservers for any domains referred to in the NS records of the spam domain. By doing so I can find fairly large networks of interrelated spam domains and spam websites, the addresses of many of which already appear on the likes of the Spamcop and Spamhaus SBL/XBL lists or appear there shortly afterwards.

The point is, is it practical to use this sort of information against spammers and is anyone already doing it?

Re:Use the information against the spammers?

[Anonymous Coward]

it sounds like you have your features (privacy protecting registrar or not, dynamic ip or not, and TTL value)

you have large data sets in both of your classes: you have a corpus of known spammers and can probably generate a whitelist of non-spammers for your domain.

sounds like you have everything you need for writing a Bayesian classifier. If your accuracy and recall are high with your known data, you probably are on to something. Write a paper about it, or see if the Zdziarski (DSPAM), or the SpamBayes guys are interested in incorporating your work.

Re:Use the information against the spammers?

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

I have actually built a similar system to that a year or so back, and ran it on our mail servers. Obviously, because it was just for testing, it only tagged spam and didn't block anything, and only for preselected accounts.

If I say so myself, it worked extraordinarily well. It took a lot of tweaking, but it's hit-rate was nearly perfect, if you of course ignore the spam from legitimate domains (which would subsequently usually be picked up and tagged by the SPF filter). False positives were virtually non-existent (one in many thousands), and after investigation all of those proved to be from people running their own mail servers at home without 'proper' domain names and records.

The project was put on hold because one of my other projects suddenly went through the roof in sales (yay!), though as things seem to be calming down on that front a bit (work-wise, not sale-wise), I'm still looking at options for continuing that work. The big problem here is of course that the anti-spam market is filled with products, lots of 'em free, and I don't easily see a way to break in there. I like doing it for the tech side, but the business side of such things is really not something I enjoy doing...

On a side-note, I wouldn't use low TTL's for detection...

Re:Use the information against the spammers?

[dodobh]

Yes, and yes. Nameservers in dynamic IP space is definitely fast-flux territory.

Re:Use the information against the spammers?

[techno-vampire]

the DNS for the spam domain having a very low TTL value set.

That, in and of itself shouldn't be enough. It might be that the domain's hosted from the domain owner's private box, on Dynamic IP. Although I don't do that, I do use EveryDNS.net to give my home machine a routable name on my domain for personal use. They use a TTL of one hour, and recommend that you update your IP about every two hours to keep it current. Probably, using registration at one of those "privacy protecting registrars" is more of a tip-off.

Don't worry. CEO is advisor to CyberCrime Unit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, Bhavin Turakhia Founder, CEO & Chairman of Directi "...also serves as a technical advisor to the local CyberCrime Investigation Cell" it says on the Directi website.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Sometimes you can't beat real life for a great laugh.

Hold on, it also says,"Directi operates various online web properties and web services. To report any form of abuse activity (spam, phishing, adware etc) with respect to any Directi service simply send an email to abuse [at] directi [dot] com"

Argh, ha ha, oh dear, oh dear, I think I'll never stop laughing...

Not jail, something far simpler

[SmallFurryCreature]

Bad credit.

Simply give them a sentence of a 5 year bad credit report. No more loans, no more credit-cards etc etc.

If you can't handle money responsibly, you get a warning period in which you can't spend any money easily.

It keeps the jails for real criminals, protects people from themselves while still being a massive deterent.

Re:Not jail, something far simpler

[BronsCon]

So they go from spam to identity fraud, which they're probably already doing with all the personal information they gather while billing for their wares. That really won't work.

Where's that "Your spam solution won't work" form?

Re:Not jail, something far simpler

[Obsi]

Here it is. Not even filled out either.

Your post advocates a
 
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
 
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
 
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
 
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
 
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
 
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
 
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
 
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
 
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:Not jail, something far simpler

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Excellent suggestion! Perhaps this is happening anyway to people who allow themselves to be easily defrauded, but I would certainly be in favor of extending it to "spam gourmets". I think something like this is both fair and practical, and indeed feasible.

Phantom Corporations

[Ngarrang]

In the Directi response, "# The report claims that âoe48 ICANN-accredited Registrars (affiliated with Directi) ⦠do not seem to exist and are phantom.â
This statement is factually incorrect, and was completely unverified by Knujon. Knujon did not even bother to contact ICANN in this regards to get the right facts. The truth of the matter is that all 48 companies which belong to Directi and its clients, are in existence and are duly incorporated and validly existing under law."

IANAL, but I don't think phantom corporations are illegal in the USA. There seems to be plenty of corporations that exist only as a name on a piece of paper. So, yes, given this, they are right in saying that they validly exist. That does not address the fact that the companies may in fact be phantoms and appear to be a rather inappropriate way of doing business.

DirectI's reply

[pvera]

Disclaimer: DirectI is the wholesaler for my micro registrar company, http://gopedro.net/ , which I have discussed here in Slashdot in the past.

Yesterday DirectI issued a rebuttal to these accusations:

http://blog.resellerclub.com/2008/09/04/our-official-response-to-malicious-reports-which-falsely-implicate-the-directi-group/

The privacy protection for WHOIS is a necessary evil. I am tired of getting letters from the "Domain Registry of America" telling me that I need to renew my domains, usually at triple of what I actually charge my own customers. With privacy protection in place, this kind of scam dies.

I have zero knowledge of what any spammers may or not have done while customers of DirectI, but my personal, first hand experience is that this is a company that has never let me down in over four years, have always been prompt with their technical and billing support and have been nothing but pure joy to deal with.

Re:DirectI's reply

[Kazoo the Clown]

The privacy protection for WHOIS is a necessary evil. I am tired of getting letters from the "Domain Registry of America" telling me that I need to renew my domains, usually at triple of what I actually charge my own customers. With privacy protection in place, this kind of scam dies.

Oh cry me a river. I get those letters once a year and just toss 'em. Big F^'in deal. That's really the best argument you can muster?

Re:DirectI's reply

[pvera]

I get them for my own domains, for domains I handle for granny types that get scared at the slightest mention of anything technical, then I have to hear the complaints from my paranoid customers wondering how is it possible for some third party to find their mailing address.

Then on top of that, the ones that complain that I am the one scamming them, trying to up their renewal pricing.

By the way, we also get sales calls, and catalogs addressed to "domain holder, whatever.com" all the time.

It *is* a pain in the ass.

Re:DirectI's reply

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing you don't have a brick & mortar business. You'd get junk mail there all the time. THE HORROR!

People hate spam. but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this domain hiding a GOOD thing? Isn't this one of our few remaining protections against oppression? I think this is a bad cause to get behind. I wouldn't let SPAM -- a mere inconvenience and resource drain -- mean the end of privacy mechanisms. I'd quote Ben Franklin here, but I think you already know what I'm getting at.

Anyhow, the response to SPAM by the government is wrong. The solution should be technological, not legal. I think people should be free to send whatever unsolicited messages they want, and that technology should be used to protect would-be recipients from the unwanted nuisance. Seriously, people simply need to choose a messaging system that is different than the obsolete "e-mail" mechanism. I'm happy with the old e-mail system for now, because SPAM filters based on content analysis, etc, keep me from seeing any of it! But if e-mail SPAM ever starts to annoy me, my response will be to SWITCH TO A CAPTCHA-PROTECTED BLOG (or something similar), rather than support penalties for spammers!

People should have been more vigilant about inviting government to turn Internet packets in to crimes. Sure, the masses might like the idea of annoying spammers getting fined and getting put in jail -- and it's easy to say: "If they couldn't [pay the fine/do the time], then the shouldn't have committed the crime", but, think about it: Certain uses of the Internet are now criminal, and the government now has a role, and an interest in legislating more restrictions and requirements to make it easier to enforce the laws that the people initially asked for.

So, we have ideas like "Internet tax" and "banning off-shore, online gambling" and "monitoring traffic for child porn (and, hence, anything else)" and "the ability to snoop on VoIP", etc.

Stop thinking of spammers as CRIMINALS. Stop thinking of SPAM as a problem caused by criminals. Stop being a victim and shifting responsibility to the government to "fix" the situation. The "problem", if you choose to think of spam this way, is with E-MAIL. Switch to a web-page based blog-like system, and require unsolicited messages to be posted by entering a CAPTCHA, just like every blog in existence. The problem of a flood of unsolicited messages is solved, while people who genuinely want to contact you get through with little inconvenience. Messages from known users can be filtered with your own "white list". Anyhow, the key is to make the process for sending unsolicited e-mail messages different from messages sent from known senders. Messaging systems simply need to make this distinction. Requiring the sender of the unsolicited message to interact "live" with the intended receiver's server, and respond to the spontaneous challenge of a CAPTCHA, will almost entirely eliminate messages intended for indiscriminate bulk distribution. (Some marketing firms might hire humans to solve CAPTCHAs, or they might devote racks of PCs to try to solve CAPTCHA challenges, but that's a huge investment on their part, and simply making your CAPTCHA have additional random variation makes the idea of automating an attack suitable for spamming the masses economically unrewarding.)

I dislike spam, but trying to stop it with laws and various hacks (content recognition, blacklists, etc) is futile. E-mail is simply too open to attack. Sure, it's not "right" that people should choose to exploit the weakness of e-mail, but the Universe doesn't care about our feelings of justice; there will always be people who will, for malice, profit, accident, stupidity, sadness, fame, power, etc, exploit e-mail, and they'll find some way to do it. Meanwhile, a mere CAPTCHA, despite stories about how some computers can (barely) solve them fast enough to make spamming economically viable, can easily make it totally futile for the idea of unsolicited bulk messaging to work anymore! The solution is the CAPTCHA on the RECIPIENT server, not laws or filtering technology. Kill spam by moving away from "e-mail"; it will be the end of an era, and poor souls who, for whatev

enom?

[Van Cutter Romney]

Isn't that the registrar for Google hosted websites?

spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

what's this spam you speak of?

regards,
ac@gmail.com

Click-through vs. Conversion

[dwarg]

First of all spammers don't get a 1% conversion rate (sales), a lot of legitimate businesses don't even get that from their own targeted email lists. They get a 1%-3% click-through rate, which than leads to another 1%-3% conversion rate.

So at best your looking at 1,000,000 emails leading to 30,000 clicks and then to 900 sales. And again 3% for both would be absurdly high for spam. Your real conversion number for 1 million un-targeted email addresses is going to be a lot closer to 100 than 900. The reason they can still make money with such small numbers is because there is no significant upfront cost for sending email to millions of random email addresses.

If email cost $0.001, that's one tenth of a penny, per recipient, it wouldn't cost your average user anything significant but it would cost your hypothetical spammer $1000.00 for a million addresses. That's a very significant upfront cost and would kill almost all spam instantly.

After that we can start instituting tokens for legitimate email lists like newsletters, or simply setting up something like a white list so email from authorized senders doesn't get charged. There would still be enough random email to generate a nice revenue stream for the email overlords that take it on while still being cheap enough to be thought of as free.

Re:Click-through vs. Conversion

[AvitarX]

SPAM already costs $.00032/message. I bet it is profitable enough that quadrupling (.00032 to .00132) the cost won't make too much of a difference.

And will a system to manage such micro-payments be feasible under $.001/transaction? Even if purchases are done $10 at a time, the tracking would probably be difficult.

Re:Click-through vs. Conversion

[AvitarX]

Forgot my citation
http://samvak.tripod.com/busiweb32.html

Re:Click-through vs. Conversion

[dwarg]

It's true that tracking would be difficult. I make no claims that setting up such a system would be trivial, it's just one theory.

I do have to question your source (cited below) for the $0.00032 per email. The author states that number is an average and doesn't explain how he arrived at that average. Not that I disagree with the number, but whether its an average based on spammer's rates for email lists and throttled mailing services, or per spam email. I would be almost certain it's the former rather than the latter as it's infinitely easier to find numbers for and calculate.

So as an average some people are actually paying more per email--those that, most likely, don't know what they're doing, lose money and get out. And there are those that pay less, know what they're doing, make lots of money, and thus send out the majority of unsolicited email. So I think quadrupaling the cost would have a real affect, but again it's just a random theory from a /. noob.

On a side note here is the paragraph you cited and I have to ask, why does the author keep dancing between daily and yearly figures? It makes the numbers much more confusing to follow. He could have at least totaled the dailies or averaged yearly numbers to give us a baseline.

"More than 2.3-5 billion spam messages are sent daily. eMarketer puts the figures a lot lower at 76 billion messages in 2002. By 2006, daily spam output will soar to c. 15 billion missives, says Radicati Group. Jupiter projects a more modest 268 billion annual messages this year (2005). An average communication costs the spammer 0.00032 cents."

goes to show

[hesaigo999ca]

goes to show EVEN ICANN can be bought

End spam by making it legal

[bxbaser]

and illegal to block ,within days or weeks the average user will get 2000 spams a day forcing isp's to implement whitelisting and users to accept whitelisting any email address without it will be unusable in days.

when only a couple spams get thru a day users will read them when 3000 spams get thru a day users are forced to just delete them.

So let's boil this down...

[intnsred]

We have no right of privacy when registering a domain. Big brother wants to know all.

This reminds me of the Mexican immigration debate. Rather than to crack down on the companies employing the immigrants, the police arrest individual workers who came here to work. The companies creating the incentive for workers to come to the US generally get off scott-free.

In this case, it's rather than cracking down on the spammers and the companies benefiting from the spam -- and an increasing amount of my spam is "mainstream"/large corporate spam -- the gov't will crack down, killing my privacy, and hinder me from hiding from the spammers.

Actually nail the spam companies and the companies making spammers rich? Naww, that ain't the way it's done in the land where corporations run the gov't.

Re:So let's boil this down...

[Kazoo the Clown]

It seems to me that public registry is no different than when you want to use a business name, you're supposed to publish a DBA in the local paper (in California anyway, if not the entire US). If you're representing yourself on the web, it's important to be able to figure out just who you are. It's a little different than whistle-blower anonymity, I think we ought to have things like web-browsing anonymity (what sites we visit are nobodies business but our own, not our ISPs, the governments, the RIAAs, etc.). But if you're putting up a website, and especially in the .com domain, you're purporting to be "doing business" in some form and there are legitimate public interests in keeping track of just who is doing business where. ESPECIALLY if you are accepting payment in some form.

Now an alternative might be a browser that checks every website against the whois and if it's anonymous will automatically block or flag it in some way. The whois servers probably wouldn't like that too much at the moment, but they ought to give some thought to this-- possibly connected to certificates or something if that would help in implementing browser recognition of such "stealth" sites.

Only Hitler is anti-spam

[burnitdown]

They are exercising their freedom.

It may be modern art, or postmodern theory, or avantgarde poetry -- but you see it as spam.

The problem is that your interpretation is that... just an interpretation! There is no objective reality, even known relativistically, for it to correspond to.

Reality is anything you want it to be.

Spam might be the most genius works of our culture, and you would ban it.

Only Hitler is anti-spam. Stand for freedom: stand up for spam!

Re:Only Hitler is anti-spam

[Anti Globalism]

That's right; who are we to say that spam is BAD? Isn't that kind of...nazi-ish? I've heard the same arguments from racists in my community: "I don't like other values conflicting with my own, so I'm going to repatriate the immigrants here." I defend spammers, they're realists who use the system to their own advantage. Good for them; each to his own.

Re:Only Hitler is anti-spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, now burnitdown is using sockpuppets to talk to himself. Damnit twitter, look what you started!

Re:Why is timothy so useless?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go ahead and disagree here.

Timothy is probrably the least bad of the bunch.

They killed a spammer/scammer for me

[phorm]

I was getting a lot of spam which had links redirecting to this scam site. It was one of those sites that does a fake virus scan and claims you're infected so they can sell you a bogus product (funny how it was scanning windows-related files on my Linux system, eh).

I sent the offending URL to privacyprotect and was surprised when they actually responded by pulling the spammer's protection, then forwarding the info to his ISP and having the domain itself pulled (the nameserver has been changed to "ns1.suspended-domain.com" and DNS no longer resolves).

Re:They killed a spammer/scammer for me

[intnsred]

Shhh!

phorm, that doesn't go along with the story that's being created.

How are we supposed to believe in newspeak if people like you are contradicting it?!

Re:They killed a spammer/scammer for me

[dodobh]

I currently work at Directi [1]. Official abuse policy when I don't get involved is to suspend the domain.

Abuse policy when I get involved is to suspend the customer (that's a few hundred domains for this sort of crap, or a few months ago, a few thousand. Unhappily, I don't have enough political clout yet to suspend large customers).

[1] Dealing with abuse issues is not part of the job description. That's a volunteer activity.

Re:They killed a spammer/scammer for me

[janrinok]

So let me get this right. You gave a link to a scam which no longer resolves under DNS? So what good is the link?

Re:They killed a spammer/scammer for me

[cras]

I visited Directi a couple of months ago when they wanted to see me and begin sponsoring my open source IMAP server. The company certainly didn't feel like a sleazy spam harboring company, so I find these accusations a bit hard to belive. The summary could have also made it a lot clearer that Directi is saying these are all lies instead of just a small "BTW here's their reply" link.

Re:They killed a spammer/scammer for me

[phorm]

a) You can visit the link and - seeing that it's no longer valid - follow that in this case they did do proper diligence in killing the spam-domain.

b) You can see look up that domain name, and see the whois

c) If the domain is ever resurrected somehow through a different registrar, I'd like to see it attached to the word "scam" in most search engines

Privacy hinders law enforcement

[mi]

PrivacyProtect.org

This is simply an illustration — the privacy we fight for for ourselves is also very handy for crooks. Be they the "traditional" criminals, whose conviction is thrown out, because the cops did not jump through all of the hoops authorizing their surveillance and other privacy-busting aspects of investigation... Or be they spammers, whose identities are hidden by the same means, intended (or purporting) to keep private identities of honest domain owners.

So, if a terrorist can escape prosecution due to "prosecutorial misconduct" and become a professor of an otherwise reputable University (and a chance of counting a President among his friends), is it any wonder, a spammer can reappear under a different name every week with impunity?

I'm not saying, we demolish the privacy protections or stop punishing overzealous prosecutors. Just reminding of the flip side of it...

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[MightyYar]

Did Bill Ayers ever try to kill anyone? I thought all he did was help blow up a statue? I don't think you can be labeled a terrorist for property damage. Forgive my ignorance if he did more than that.

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[mi]

Did Bill Ayers ever try to kill anyone? I thought all he did was help blow up a statue?

WordNet defines "terrorism" as (emphasis mine::

The noun terrorism has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts) 1. terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act -- (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)

Belonging to a terrorist organization makes one a terrorist too, even if one is not (unlike Ayers) directly involved in any actual terrorism — take Hassan Nasrallah, for example.

Although per the definition above, simply threatening violence to attain certain goals is terrorism, Ayers' organization were planning to blow up an Army NCO club next. Fortunately for most concerned, they blew themselves up instead — the organization changed strategy to try to avoid casualties after this incident... But were also armed robberies (with fatalities) — a revolution always needs cash... (Interestingly, Joseph Stalin's first job in the Communist Party was to "rob the robbers" — what do the owners of "Democracy Now!" have in store for us?).

Just take Ayers' own words, spoken not during an interrogation, and not decades ago, but to the media this year: "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough."

Whether he actually killed anyone is not relevant to his being a terrorist — only to an additional charge of murder, which, according to his "memoir" he may also have committed, but nobody knows for sure: "''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''"

But his organization's ideology, as summarized by him back then was: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

Back to my original point — although the scumbag's guilt is undeniable (and, indeed, not denied), he avoided any punishment, because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against them...

So, yes, Ayers was a member of a terrorist and otherwise criminal organization, and a terrorist himself — committed to this day to terrorism...

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[MightyYar]

I guess I'm just not sold on the concept of a group that would take pains to ensure no casualties being classified as "terrorist". Douchebags, certainly. And of course their activities were still dangerous and COULD have killed someone - but I certainly can't say I would be "terrorized" by such people. Angry at, sure, but not terrorized.

Also, to be fair, an army target could be viewed as a legitimate target. For instance, I think that in the 9/11 attacks the WTC was solidly terrorism, but the Pentagon attack was not.

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[mi]

I guess I'm just not sold on the concept of a group that would take pains to ensure no casualties being classified as "terrorist".

It certainly may be, because it has a threat of violence in it, i.e.: next time, it may be you. But the group began to struggle to avoid hurting people (although, not property) only later, after some of their own got blown up, and they realized the public's hostility towards such methods. Before that, "kill the rich people" was the first part of the (already quoted) slogan.

Also, to be fair, an army target could be viewed as a legitimate target.

Even if it is a dance hall, and when the army is that of your own country? Whatever... But see below:

WTC was solidly terrorism, but the Pentagon attack was not.

Whether something is terrorism is determined not by the target, but by the intent (unlike many other crimes, unfortunately). Pentagon bombing on 9/11 and Weatherman's attack of America's military (they bombed Pentagon too, BTW) had no military purpose — they were done to terrorize — threaten civilians with more and more violence to achieve "goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature".

You could argue, that they aren't especially hideous terrorists — better than Osama bin Laden, for example — but they were still terrorists.

But we are way too far off-topic... You don't deny, the man was a criminal, and that's what matters to this discussion — despite being a criminal, he avoided punishment, because law enforcement broke rules while gathering evidence against him. The rules which, once again, were put in place to protect the innocent...

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[MightyYar]

No, you're right, the man's a criminal. Didn't mean to turn the discussion into a pedantic holy war :)

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[rtechie]

Although per the definition above, simply threatening violence to attain certain goals is terrorism,

Violence involves harm to a person. If you wire a completely empty building with explosives and then detonate it, harming nobody, that's either demolition or arson. Not "violence".

Bill Ayers is guilty of vandalism and maybe "improper use of explosives". No more, no less. He should have done some time for this, maybe a year. It does not matter what you THINK he MIGHT have done. You MIGHT also THINK space aliens shot Kennedy.

Calling Bill Ayers a "terrorist" is just a glib attack and cheapens real terrorism. I don't consider Operation Rescue or the KKK "terrorists" either, and they both have an ideology of murder.

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[rtechie]

Weatherman's attack of America's military (they bombed Pentagon too, BTW) had no military purpose -- they were done to terrorize -- threaten civilians with more and more violence to achieve "goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature"

Incorrect. The stated aim of the Pentagon bombing was to halt the air campaign over Vietnam. It was successful, bombing operations and planning were disrupted for 2 days due to a burst pipe and power problems. Clearly a "military purpose".

One could argue the exact same of the 9-11 attacks. The WTC was hit (in part) to disrupt the US economy because it was the centerpiece of American trade. This was successful, the US economy took a hit after 9-11. THe other two targets, the Pentagon and (presumably) the White House, were military targets. They were hit to disrupt enemy command and control.

Do you consider the current Russian invasion of Georgia "terrorism"? The Russians are clearly trying to manipulate public opinion in their favor.

"Terrorist" is now largely a pejorative term with no meaning, like "evildoers".

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[mi]

Incorrect. The stated aim of the Pentagon bombing was to halt the air campaign over Vietnam.

Incorrect. It was not a "stated aim", but totally unintended — at least, according to Bill Ayers himself: "It turns out that we blew up a bathroom and, quite by accident [emphasis mine -mi], water plunged below and knocked out their computers for a time, disrupting the air war and sending me into deepening shades of delight."

Clearly a "military purpose".

Ooops... You really ought to study your heroes better so as not to embarrass yourself less defending them.

The WTC was hit (in part) to disrupt the US economy because it was the centerpiece of American trade. This was successful, the US economy took a hit after 9-11.

Actually, no, it did surprisingly little to the economy. Although the country was still recovering from Clinton's dot-com boom-bust of 2000, the destruction of WTC had little economic effect, other than the cost of the buildings and the lives of the people in them and in the airplanes. More importantly, the intent was not to disrupt trade — bin Laden et al did not even expect the buildings to collapse. It was simply violence against civilians perpetrated to further their agenda. Which is exactly, what terrorism is defined as...

Do you consider the current Russian invasion of Georgia "terrorism"?

No, of course not. They didn't use or threaten violence against civilians — the closest they came to it, was "warning" Georgians after the shooting ended, that their safety "can not be guaranteed", if they chose to return to their homes in the "liberated" enclaves. That's simply old-fashioned war followed by ethnic cleansing — not terrorism...

"Terrorist" is now largely a pejorative term with no meaning

It is certainly pejorative, but there remains a fairly tight definition (already quoted). This thread is in evidence, even if unintentionally...

Re:Privacy hinders law enforcement

[rtechie]

Incorrect. It was not a "stated aim",

Obviously the goal of the Weathermen in general, and this attack in particular, was to end the Vietnam war. The Pentagon is clearly military target. You're just being petulant.

Actually, no, it did surprisingly little to the economy.

Wall Street was briefly SHUT DOWN. If that's not "disrupting the economy", I don't know what is.

They didn't use or threaten violence against civilians

Are you seriously going to claim that no Georgian civilians we injured in the Russian invasion? I'm sure you'll say that was "accidental" but "accidental" also counts. If civilians are killed you have only their WORD FOR IT that it wasn't intentional and governments almost always lie about such things. So the only reasonable assumption is that all killing of civilians are deliberate.

If "Joe the terrorist" is sitting in a movie theater crowded with civilians and you drop a 1000 lbs. bomb on the theater killing everyone inside you're not "targeting Joe the terrorist" you're targeting the THEATER.

fairly tight definition (already quoted).

The Russian invasion of Georgia clearly falls within the definition you cited. Any attack that results in the death of civilians is terrorism.

treat them like drug dealers...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and take all their property, bank accounts, and also toss them in prison for a minimum of 5 years, no club fed, hard core prison.

Any company found to have conspired with the spammer would receive the same treatment as a "partner" in the illegal act.

If the offense is also spreading viruses, Trojans, or worse, then we can toss their asses in to the fire by adding a long term of service in the military digging ditches and poking through soil to remove land mines in areas full of them...

Spamming is...

[Anonymous Coward]

terrorism. There problem solved. Time to use that Patriot Act and DMCA to the fullest extent of the law.

Understanding Phantom Accreditations

[Anonymous Coward]

Registrars have chosen to establish shell corporations for the express purpose of gaming the domain name aftermarket. More accreditations equate with additional access to registry queues and thus an increased opportunity to secure expiring domain names. Directi is not the only organization that has set up a bevy of these corps; there are many other registrars with multiple accreditations engaged in the same game.

At issue is the concept of establishing a level playing field. Most users are unaware that certain registrar "families" have 100+ shots at the registry queue while other registrars have only a single time at bat.

The fault, of course, is in ICANN's accreditation process that enables this set of circumstances. In the future, you can count on these phantoms gaming the new gTLD landrush cycle (just as happened during the .eu landrush).

A year and a half ago ICANN's CEO called for a comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process in the wake of the RegisterFly meltdown. That review has still not been published.

Directi shouldn't be faulted for playing within the established rules, rather ICANN should be blamed for not having implemented necessary changes to the registrar accreditation process that could thwart the unacceptable gaming currently underway.

Thank you!

[BronsCon]

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

This is just standard practice -- why target them?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that directi is being unfairly targeted for the same practices that all large registrars follow.

PrivacyProtect.org is not a unique service of its kind, similar services are offered by every large registrar (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy).

Examples are:
1. Go Daddy -- https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/dbp/landing.asp?ci=9002
2. Enom -- http://www.enom.com/privacy-protection/domain-name-whois-privacy.asp
3. Network Solutions -- http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/name-it/private.jhtml?siteid=100&channelid=P68C100S1N0B2A1D231E0000V106&clickid=1000000000

Also, some of the ways these conclusions have been arrived at are a bit tenuous and improbable.

Just because ESTDoamins and other spammers use privacyprotect doesnt make directi complicit in their act.

American?

[rtechie]

Directi is not apparently an American company.

Check out the the Flicker site attached to their "official response". They are located in India. They're an Indian company.

Modern life is spam

[burnitdown]

Nah, he's a comrade who works with the same organization (CORRUPT).

When you think about it, modern life IS spam.

* Movies like Burn After Reading: you learn nothing, you laugh a little at recycled jokes, six months later you don't even care. It's brain-spam to keep you from noticing how much your life sucks.

* Fast food is clearly caloric and nutritional spam, but it's also a spam meme. "I need food quickly" should mean "make a sandwich."

* Sex is spam. Get drunk, find some random slag in a bar, and then afterwards you're thinking you should be happy because all your friends will no longer think you're a loser because you had sex. Brain spam.

* Politics is spam. The same lobbyists own all the candidates, so they make a cute little show before deciding which industries need support this year.

The only difference is that people think they want this spam instead of radical spam, which only 29% at any given time think they want.

Re:Modern life is spam

[Traiguen]

Arguments that lead nowhere, proposing no solutions and draining your energy while giving you no new knowledge are brain spam too, and unfortunately, we have too much of those in modern life. Just say no spam.