Supreme Court Lets Virginia Anti-Spam Law Die

SpuriousLogic sends in a CNN report that begins "The Supreme Court has passed up a chance to examine how far states can go to restrict unsolicited e-mails in efforts to block spammers from bombarding computer users. The high court without comment Monday rejected Virginia's appeal to keep its Computer Crimes Act in place. It was one of the toughest laws of its kind in the nation, the only one to ban noncommercial — as well as commercial — spam e-mail to consumers in that state. The justices' refusal to intervene also means the conviction of prolific commercial spammer Jeremy Jaynes will not be reinstated." Jaynes remains behind bars because of a federal securities fraud conviction unrelated to the matter of spamming.

Comments

I believe in Freedom from SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in freedom. As an American and a citizen of America, a land that was birthed in the patriotic defense of freedom, freedom is important to me and my wonderful family and our church and community. That is why I believe, like millions of other Americans, and the great majority of Italians, in Freedom. But when a malicious band of radical Italians, who curse our freedom and want their countrymen to not have the freedoms that America gave them, use the blessings and liberties of our freedoms to attack Freedom, I say this means war. If these Italo-extremists attack with spams on our computer networks and internet, then I will stand shoulder to shoulder with patriotic defenders of our homeland and our freedom-loving Italian allies until the false friends of the Italian people, the freedom-haters are defeated. Sometimes we will have to sacrifice some temporary freedoms in the defense of the greater freedom and the responsibility of freedom and the responsibility to responsibly exercise that freedom, that comes with being a free American (as opposed to a Mexican or something of that sort). GOD bless you all and good morning. We will prevail.

Cue the form

[Jurily]

Your post advocates a...

Re:Cue the form

[Shakrai]

Your post advocates a...

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante (X) form-based

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
(X) The meme is tired and worn out and I'm just as likely to get a -1 troll as a +5 funny.

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
(X) 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:

(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?
( ) Incompatibility 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:

(X) 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!

Responding the appeal

[Thanshin]

"Sir, the Supreme Court rejected our appeal to keep the antispam law."

"Did they state a reason for the rejection?"

"Yes, we apparently need a much larger voting base. They offered to provide us with the necessary means to enlarge our voting base in weeks."

e-mail is just too cheap to send

[blind biker]

Sorry folks I know most here just don't want to hear this, but it's the only solution that will eventually work: require the sender to pay a very small amount per e-mail sent. For instance, 1 cent of a $ or EUR per e-mail, plus 1 cent per every MB of e-mail size. I would be more than happy to pay this modest sum.

This could (and should) be implemented on a recepient-level: there should be e-mail service provider companies that will require this payment for e-mails sent to their customers. This way, no change to any protocol or standard is required for this to work. Also, withing companies ("intranets"), this fee would be waived, so that mass mailings would be still possible for company announcements etc.

While 1 cent/email is completely immaterial for any normal user out there, it will deter the prolific spammer (including the Nigerian ones).

Re:e-mail is just too cheap to send

[sakdoctor]

Incredible! You've solved spam.

Where thousands of security experts have failed, you alone have come up with the magic bullet.

Re:e-mail is just too cheap to send

[blind biker]

Incredible! You've solved spam.

Where thousands of security experts have failed, you alone have come up with the magic bullet.

Maybe that's the advantage of the idea: it came from someone who doesn't know that "it can't be done". It's called naive creativity.

Re:Supreme Court doesn't rule on everything

[ubrgeek]

> politicians are not advertising a service that the email receiver directly pays for

Tell that to Blagojevich ... ;)

Re:Supreme Court doesn't rule on everything

[PopeRatzo]

it's hardly surprising that the SCROTUS decided to let precedent do its job.

Well, that's what we elected the precedent to do.