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Virgina Criminalizes spam, ACLU against it
ibis writes "In ZDNN's article about Virginia's new anti-spam law, it is stated that the American Civil Liberties Union intends to challenge the new law on constitutional grounds. We should all let the ACLU know what we think about this on the ACLU Freedom Network Feedback form. " A little background: Virgina, where AOL is based, has made it so that they will be the first state to be able to *criminally prosecute* "malicious spammers". Not just like the Washington law, which has a fine, this will allow jail times and other such fineries. Bring it on, I say.
Say you find someone that farmed a newsgroup for your email address. Then what, sue them and ask where they got your email? They say, "You sent me this mail that requested my information on the Super Product 2000," and present a nice email, made in Word (they wouldn't be using vi, I'm sure :)).
It's tough to prove how they got your email. And then you'd have to somehow prove you didn't send that email...
To my knowledge, the ACLU has NEVER ONCE been right about ANYTHING!
There's one group whose rights the ACLU will NOT stand up for: people that have normal, decent
moral values.
Sure, they'll defend your right to stand on the street naked and sing the Star Spangled Banner with your thumb up your butt, but if you want to say that maybe, just maybe, God exists... WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Well, that whole post was rather clueless. No comment needed.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Here's what I sent them:
Mr. Willis-
Re: your stance on the soon-to-be-law making spam illegal, I welcome you,
anytime you're in Charlottesville, to come by and look at our spam logs.
Spam is the moral equivalent of me standing in YOUR living room with a
megaphone. Do you have the right to stifle my speech? Yes? Because it's
your property. This is my network (well, my boss's...I'm just the engineer
on this choo-choo), so I guess I have the right to stifle a megaphone
toting idiot in my workplace.
Perhaps another metaphor...what if I were to stop by your house or office
and plaster 1000 handbills on the walls. And another guy did it. Then
another guy. Who cleans it up? That would be you.
That's what working at an ISP is like on the spam front. It is not free speech. It is theft of services, pure and simple. We have to deal with the bounce messages, the complaints, then more bounces, then more complaints, then...you get the idea. I have no sympathies with the direct marketers who feel their right to make a profit from my time is threatened.
Ultimately, that is the type of person the ACLU would be sticking up for in this matter. Parasites. Though I suppose they have their place in someone's cosmos.
This is NOT a civil liberties issue. You have no more right to send 10,000 emails across MY network than I have to drive my car 10,000 times
through your front yard with a pizza ad on the roof.
Perhaps you are aware of the fact that we do NOT own our postal boxes?
The USPO dictates what can and can't go into it. But, I do own my email "box". I pay for/trade for it. Therefore I dictate what can and cannot go
into it. So what gives bob@selling-crap.com the right to send me and everyone else unwanted email? Is the right to "send" more eminent than the right to refuse? I'd hate to think where that logic would go if extended into the rest of human interaction.
I trust this little rant finds you healthy and prosperous.
best,
jamie
--------------------------
Your Favorite OS Sucks.
^D
Gods know I love the First Amendment, but it's not relevant in this case. Spammers are free to say whatever they want... they're just not free to steal my bandwidth, my CPU time, and my storage space to do it -- not to mention my time. If they want to try selling something on the 'net, they can get a web site like everyone else and use their own bandwidth, CPU time, and storage space for their advertising, and we can all choose for ourselves whether we want to give them our time.
Incidentally, I think the same logic is applicable to telephone solictors... I'm the one paying for the phone line and service, after all... why should they be allowed to use it without my permission?
I don't like this. Such anti-spam laws are *much* too subjective. What is a "malicious spammer"? If I collect a list of email addresses of Slashdot posters and send them a mail advertising my new Linux-oriented site, is that malicious spamming? What if I "spam" slashdot posters with offers for free beta versions of a car mp3 player? I'm sure very few would object to *that* spam, but could I still get thrown in jail for it?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
would most certainly object to it. Why? If I had a need for what you offer, I would search you out. I most certainly do not want to pay for you to send me unsolicited messages.
I don't object to targeted messaging like that, especially when it's not asking me to buy something. If somebody wants to give me free stuff, send away.
If, however, you want to pay my ISP bill every month...I guess I'd suffer through it.
What does the ISP bill have to do with this? Nearly every ISP nowadays offers unlimited (unmetered) service, so you don't pay your ISP by the minute. Therefore spam isn't increasing your ISP charges. If you live outside of the US in a country without free local calls, I suppose you could have a case for them increasing your phone bill, however.
Any unsolicited mass internet mailing should be considered malicious. Should you go to jail for it? Probably not. But if you do not bring that as an available sentence...what do you do to repeat offenders?
Just keep fining the repeat offenders. Increase the fines each time. Perhaps put in a clause to confiscate any assets gained through the spamming in addition to a fine.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by Mojoski:
I just read in an AP story that this law ".. would make it illegal to own software that helps people falsify their on-line identities". Does this mean that Netscape Mail would be illegal cause you can change your identity to a bogus email message? I can kinda see where the ACLU is coming from if the law really says this.
Posted by SpikeONE:
The following is what I sent to the ACLU.
--
Virginia's new Anti-Spamming Law - YES
Tell Mr. Kent Willis that his statement that "there was little evidence that spamming was enough of a problem to justify constraints on free speech on the Internet" is wrong. As a Network Administrator of a multi-million dollar company, I know how much bandwidth and time is wasted by unsolicited e-mail. It seems that Mr. Willis isn't worried (or knowledgeable) about the costs associated with such e-mails.
Also, his statement that "Expression is protected in the commercial context as well as the noncommercial context, and no one has yet to come up with a valid or compelling state interest in limiting the way e-mail is sent," is wrong. The First Amendment guarantees Freedom of Speech but it does not guarantee that I MUST accept any and all e-mail from people or companies that I do not want to associate with. If I get unwanted or offensive postal mail in my mailbox, I have the right to ask the originator to stop. If they are unwilling to stop then I can ask the Postal Service to step in and make the offender comply with my wishes. Why in the world should e-mail be any different??
I would DEFINITELY vote "YES" if any legislation similar to this were to, somehow, make it's way onto the California State ballot.
Posted by Apocalypse668:
I beg to differ. Spam is hardly protected under the 1st Amendment; the ACLU itself has acknowledged that junk mail is not protected. What's spam, but electronic junk mail? I'm sorry, but the ACLU is wrong in this respect. I'm a member, but I reserve the right to disagree with anything and everything I see fit. That's what the ACLU is all about, isn't it? The right to disagree and say that you do so?
Posted by SpikeONE:
You are, of course, correct. E-mail is not regulated. So..... I'm stuck. I wish it was (so I and my users don't have to deal with all the garbage that comes across our line) and I'm glad it's not (because I value what little privacy the Internet has left in it). As an earlier message points out, the legislation really prohibits the mailer from using false return addresses. So my rant about First Amendment rights and whatnot doesn't apply. Figures. The hands typeth before the brain thinketh. Cheers.
I have no problem with fines. That is a appropriate punishment. But making this a felony is going too far. This is how the prisons get filled up and why violent criminals get released. We arbitrarily declare certain behaviours to be felonious, then we have a situation where a large proportion of the prison population is in there for piddly crap. It's like we're just concatenating this list of of things you can do to get sent to prison for 5 years. Soon we might as well say it 5 years for every offense. See, this is all the politicians know how to do. Whatever happened to making the punishment fit the crime? Why not make first offense spammers go support the network of a big university to "pay" their fine? If they spam again, then send them to jail.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
For the people above who are equating SPAM with other forms of mass advertising (flyers, junk snail mail, phone calls) there is one key difference. There is a TANGIBLE COST to spam for the receiver and their providers. This cost is usually more per piece than the person sending it is paying! This is why Fax SPAM is illegal, because it costs more to RECEIVE a fax than it does to SEND one. (Paper is not free, especially thermal paper.) There is a FEDERAL LAW against SPAM faxes, why should email be any different?
This law is not about limiting advertising options or free speech, it's about PROTECTING the bank accounts of anyone who receives SPAM. Personal freedom NOT to be paying for someone else's advertising comes WAY before an advertiser's freedom to advertise with SPAM.
If there was a way for me to get SPAM without me having to pay for it (ISP charges, per minute connection fees, server space, etc.) that is fine
What if all of your junk mail came POSTAGE DUE and you had no choice but to accept it? What if all your phone solicitors called COLLECT and you could only accept the charges? This is what SPAM is, it's about what it costs the receiving party
I'm proud that the state I live in has adopted such a harsh stance on this issue. I'll support it 100%
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Only 28% of slashdot readers use Linux or *nix, while 55% of them use Windows. How ironic.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
Most of you don't want free speech, you want to have unlimited personal rights and freedoms and to restrict those same rights and priviledges to people you don't like or disagree with.
Free Speech is only "free" when it does not infringe upon MY rights as a private individual. If you come into my yard at 3AM and start yelling "CAR FOR SALE, CAR FOR SALE"
Did they infringe upon your 1st amendment rights? Hell no, and no court in the land would say they did. My rights as a individual OUT WEIGH your right to yell in my face uncontrollably.
If I were on public property, then I would not be able to stop you directly, I could just leave.
My inbox is NOT public property and NO ONE has the right to invade it yelling and screaming without me having legal repercussions.
I support this law 100% especially since I live in Virginia
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Only 28% of slashdot readers use Linux or *nix, while 55% of them use Windows. How ironic.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
And isn't your address public record as well? Does that give an advertiser the right to trespass on your property for the sole purpose of putting up a billboard? NO.
Does the fact that your birth certificate is public record give someone the right to stalk you? NO.
If you have public phone number where you get faxes, does that make junk faxes legal? NO. The fact that your fax number is on your business card does not negate the fact that it is illegal to cost YOU money to send an advertisement.
My personal right to communicate should not be snuffed out by a SPAMMER who will troll for my address and then violate my right to personal privacy. Just because I give something out (my email), this does NOT make it public domain!
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Only 28% of slashdot readers use Linux or *nix, while 55% of them use Windows. How ironic.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
This is incorrect. In case after case, the court precedence is that PERSONAL RIGHTS come before anyone's constitutional right to badger me.
Is stalking covered under the 1st amendment, NO.
Is breaking into a house to paint racial slurs on the walls covered by the 1st amendment, NO.
Is walking into yard and burning a cross covered by the 1st amendment, NO.
The key point I'm trying to make is that free speech is only free in public forums, my inbox is NOT a public forum, just as my house and yard are not. When the 1st amendment goes up against personal rights in private situations, the 1st amendment always loses.
Remember, as Americans, we are granted "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". This supersedes any amendment made to the constitution when it's regarding a private setting such as my email INBOX.
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Only 28% of slashdot readers use Linux or *nix, while 55% of them use Windows. How ironic.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
Then why are junk faxes outlawed? I'll tell you why, because there is a DIRECT and TANGIBLE cost to the RECEIVER.
If my phone was a public forum, why do I have the right to PROSECUTE someone for harassing phone calls? If it's public, you could say what you wanted right? Right. The fact that you CAN'T say whatever you want on MY phone proves right there that it's NOT public.
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Only 28% of slashdot readers use Linux or *nix, while 55% of them use Windows. How ironic.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
The law also criminalizes the distribution of software that makes forging email possible. Software like sendmail, for example, while probably not an intended target of the law, would be illegal under it.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
To honor the first amendment, you have to allow for spam. If you don't like spam, use your first amendment rights and fight back. If every person that got an unwanted spam told the spammer that they would never buy product from said company again, there wouldn't be a problem, and said company would go out of business.
Yeah that works well. Then they know your e-mail address is active and they will continue to spam it and sell it to other companies.
Even if I don't pay for it directly in a per unit price plan I pay for it indirectly through my ISP price. The ISP's will need to be able to handle the tremendous amount of spam they will be getting if it because acceptable. It will add additional strain on the internet as a whole also.
With snail mail I don't pay for my mail box. Every house has one. I don't pay extra if I get a lot of mail. The company sending the stuff DO need to pay to send it so they wont be sending out so much that it breaks the back of the already overstrained U.S. postal system. It cost virtually nothing to spam from the senders point of view. But it can become very costly to ISPs and recipients if the load gets too high.
Also another thing. Junkmailers are required by law to remove you from their mailing list if you request it. Spammers have no such restriction.
Later,
Xamot
?
I get 30-50 spams a day in my "main" account. So I did a couple of things. First, I set up a second account, which I only tell of to friends. Second, I set up rotating e-mail aliases, which I use for newsgroup posting. Every once in a while I change the older of the two aliases and use that new one as my address on newsgroup posting. It's not perfect, but it has cut way down on the spam to the trusted account.
.com, .net, etc. Otherwise your provider's mailer will still have to deal with all the foo@dontspamme.bar.com e-mail and send out bounce messages.
Note that my e-mail address above is a munged version of the untrusted account. Someday soon it will go the way of the dinosaur.
P.S. If you munge your account, munge at the highest level -- just before the
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I dislike spam. The folks who do it are cheap hucksters with the morals of a used car salesman. They cost time and money, sometimes big time. We had our mail relay highjacked, and it wasn;t pretty. The only way spam will be reduced is if the laws allow the spammers to get nailed. AND if the law allows the IPS's, etc. to go after the spammers - i.e. cost-effective.
I know that freedom of speach is an issue here, and the ACLU is right to question this in court, but spammers must be held responsible for their actions. You can't yell fire in a crowded public area and expect to get away with it.
Free speach is just like any other constitutional right, it carries with it responsibility for what is said, when and how.
BTW, I take my hat of to the ACLU folks. They piss me off sometimes, but they stick to their stated beliefs, no matter how popular/unpopular their stand is.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
I have to disagree with the ACLU here. The summary of the law states that spam is defined as (for the purposes of the law):
- Unsolicited
- commercial
- Forged or invalid return address.
For me, the last item is the key. I see no free speach issues there. All it says is that if you want to mail bomb the world, you'll have to stand up and take the heat for it. To put it another way, you may not convieniantly push your commercial speech off on the world, and then make it inconvieniant for the world to speak back to you.Look at your junk snail mail. You will find a return address there which you may use to reply to the commercial speech contained within. In many cases, they even provide a pre addressed and stamped envelope for that purpose.
Unless there are provisions to the contrary of the summary in the bill, I fail to see the problem.
Oh, that's a lovely argument.
"While it is true that the main problem with people throwing bricks with notes attached to them through living room windows is the commercial people who want to sell us stuff, I can imagine a need for it: say the media are completely owned by large corporate interests which block out what environmental whistle blowers have to say. The only recourse the environmental people might be throwing bricks with notes attached to them through living room windows."
You only pay to send it.
Your ISP has to (either directly in many non-US countries or indirectly in the US) pay for a bigger pipe to handle spam. They will pass those costs directly on to you. And this is not the same as the rumors of LD charges for a call to an ISP. This is simply that only so many bits will fit down an ISPs pipe.
Spammers don't often provide legitimate return mail methods and often do not remove you from the list.
This is exactly the same as getting a billboard erected in your front lawn because you gave someone your address.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Yes, I'm in a pissy mood right now.
At least you signed it right.
Regardless of junk snail mail, someone has to do the sorting. Conveniently, there are laws in place to forbid people from sending you something if you ask to be removed from the list (not so for spam). Usually it's filtered through several people or a very few people do it full time. The cost is far less than negligable.
Yes you did. It's still spam. By not making a statement about it you implicitly included it. Hrm, is it "exactly the same"? No, of course not. Is it an effective analogy? Of course so. If it weren't would you be capable of logically destroying that analogy? I would hope so. The fact you couldn't through 2 replies shows that you are simply trying to assert the analogy into being poor. It don't work that way, boy.A billboard being set up on your property does three key things. A) It reduces your property value. B) It reduces your available space on your property. C) It costs you time and money to remove it.
A) is similar to the ISPs loss of economic power through more servers required, more bandwidth, etc.
B) is similar because it reduces the available space on your disk quota (you can't ask for a better mapping).
C) is similar because it impacts you directly by costing you time to download it as well as the potential cost of money to download it for those on metered (either per minute and/or per Mbyte) bandwidth.
About the only difference is it is quite a bit more expensive to put up a billboard than spam 100,000,000 people.
That said, the law probably should be struck down because it doesn't target only the right mail.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
You, sir, are an idiot.
The ACLU has supported the KKK's (oh, doesn't that hurt) right to free speech when it was done on their own property and in public places.
Yeah. Always leftist.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Hmm, Have you read the bill? I have no use for the right of making unauthorized connections to an online services for the purposes of falsifing addresses. This bill doesn't really do that much; I liked Washington's better.
extract spammer.email > mailbomb.spammer ???
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
I'm glad the ACLU have the guts to come out and challenge this.
I hope the challenge fails, or results in only a modified form of the law - but free speech is SO MUCH more important than some annoying email in the linux kernel list.
If I'm beaten up/tortured by the police, and in an attempt to generate some interest in my case and some funding for my defence, I resort to mass emailing, that seems like an acceptable use of spam to me.
I think there need to be restrictions on SPAM, especially on the commercial stuff, but formulating the law well will be very, very, hard. By challenging the law, the ACLU will make people think harder, and hopefully result in a better formed piece of legislation.
-----
(sung to waltzing matilda - origin, I think the Steve Dahl radio program in Chicago in the late '70's)
. . .
marching through Skokie,
marching through Skokie,
please come a-marching through Skokie with me,
and we'll sing and we'll laugh as we wave our little swastikas,
please come a-marching through Skokie with me.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"I hate Illinois Nazis. . ."
-Jake Blues
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The ACLU tends to err on the side of free speech. This means that they often end up defending (legally, not morally) unpopular causes such as the right of Nazis and Klansmen to demonstrate.
The argument that needs to be made, then, is that spamming is not protected speech; it is in fact theft of services (which is already a crime). Because it consumes resources belonging to people who have not agreed to be involved in the spamming -- and who would, if asked, refuse to be involved in spamming -- it amounts to unlawful conversion of those resources.
This is also what separates spam from junk mail. Junk mail has to be delivered because the Post Office is a public entity (and, technically, your mailbox is federal property).
Totally negatory. Bulk mail is delivered because the bulk mailers pay for the privilege. They're consuming Postal Service resources, and they pay for those resources. In fact, the bulk-mail industry effectively subsidizes the rest of the Postal Service's operations, because they actually pay more than the cost of the resources their mail consumes.
Spammers do not pay for the privilege. Spam takes up disk space on the mail server I administer, and my employer is not compensated for this unauthorized use of our services. This is why spamming is an act of theft-of-services.
--for a moment of sanity.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Libertarian ranting.. (actually, they don't seem to be doing much ranting on this topic. At least I assume not since most of the rants I see are in favor of this law...I'd think one of the few things that I can agree with the Libertarians on is that the ACLU is a Good Thing[tm])
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I was wondering why we didn't hear more Libertarians cheering on the ACLU. I was looking forward to being able to agree for a change. Figures.
Daniel (not going to start a 2nd amendment thread. Worse than KDE/GNOME..)
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
All I can say is that I'm proud of the fine state I live in. GO Virginia!!!
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Limiting the "rights" of vandals to crash and/or fill up mail servers, or thieves to hijack domain names and mail servers to relay spam is not limiting anyone's freedom of speech. Do you have the right to spray paint your opinion on your neighbor's house? Let's look at this crap for what it is: one person's rights STOP when they stomp another's rights.
-jrm
--always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn...
You are just wrong.
The issue has not one thing to do with free speech or "vague government legislation."
The government isn't telling anyone that spam is bad--the people are telling the government that spam is bad, and the government is doing its job. The government is there to do the people's bidding, and the majority of users are getting fed up with a tiny number of weasels causing vast grief in the name of "freedom." Majority rules.
Harassment, vandalism, and theft are all crimes. period. They should be punished up to the point that they stop. If it takes jail time to rid the world of spammers, more power to Virginia. The idea that I should "put up" with someone else's garbage on my computer, or sacrifice my time and energy to some shyster "for the good of free speech" is ridiculous.
Your right to free speech does not extend into the right to cause harm to OTHERS. There is one hell of a big difference between freedom and chaos.
And finally, possessing a common item with the potential to cause harm isn't illegal (with perhaps a few exceptions) unless you use it. (and hurt OTHERS) Someone can generate all of the spam s/he wants w/o sending it, and fill up his/her own damned hard drive for all I care. The issue is when that activity causes grief to others.
The common thread here is OTHERS, a concept spammers should try and comprehend...
--always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn...
I dont think this is so much a First Ammendment issue as First Ammendment has been shown to not stand up in many cases, including those of inciting violence or impeding the the fair conduct of business (some that could arguably be applied to spam).
The real issue is this: ALL you Linux-loving, peace-and-freedom, individualistic, anti-establishment people here have a responsibility to stand up to govt. intervention on principle EVEN when you happen to enjoy the fruits of that particular effort.
If you let them regulate the definition of spam, and provide legal and financial consequences for it, that is one major roadblock passed for them to control the entire net with legislation (before you jump, I know it takes the enforcement of laws as well, but the threat of idle, normally unenforced laws has always been the more evil form of passive enforcement).
I say that if we want to claim the Internet is its own society, with its own social contracts and means for dealing with internal problems, then we can let ANY laws such as these get passed, and instead elect to do what we've always promised: be completely self-sufficient and self-regulating... otherwise, guess who will go it for us? And just because you aren't in the US does NOT mean that you shouldnt care.
I hate spam as much as the next geek, every domain name I register is an invitation to 6 months of UCE, every post here, on usenet, anywhere in public... but Ive dealt with it, and I think in general we are much more capable of doing so than the govt., and won't welcome the day when we have state prisons jammed pack with no-collar Internet "criminals".
Binary Boy
Exactly... I tend to think that any Internet-oriented law will tend to be either dangerously vague, or worthlessly specific. I think, no matter what, a clear policy of jurisdiction and extradition needs to be established if the net is to be governed by a legal body.
Most of our problems could be solved by better application of technology and not legislation... spam is probably topof the list. Is it too much to ask for simple sender-authentication, for instance, instead of criminalizing a simple exploit?
Binary Boy
Well the Dominoes ads, you ask the post office to stop delivery of junk mail and they have to stop it. I guess.
I'm going to wait before I judge this law; I want to see how it's worded (depending on its wording this could be as bad as the CDA, or it could be a Really Good Thing).
In theory, however, it's good. The ACLU argues that the Constitution grants everyone the right to free speech; in this they're correct. However, the Constitution does not grant anyone the right to take that free speech and forcibly cram it down the throats of two million people who don't want to listen, which is what spam does.
if people weren't getting hacked to bits and raped all over the country, maybe this law would make sense because these lawmakers would have nothing else to do. but as it is, they don't even want to put rapists and murderers to death... why fill up jails with spammers???
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
jail time now for "spam", eh?
gotta side with the aclu on this one, "spam" can be defined in so many ways it's ridiculous.
I also concur with the post about slashdot effect potentially being affected. if your site causes a "spam" of the toshiba website, I imagine Virginia could confiscate your computers and jail you.
just another BS law for sake of "protecting" the world from itself.
don't most emailers come with filter technology now? I get spammed once and once only from site X, I don't need some dumb ass legistator saving me from email I don't want.
I am amazed to see slashdot come out for this.
maybe a poll:
is the slashdot effect = spam?
So, Americans will find it illegal to send e-mail to more than x people 8-) I see a marketing opportunity for those of us that are outside that jurisdiction 8-)
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
they'll defend wackos and more wackos, but what about your avg university conservative?
http://www.salonmag.com/col/ho ro/1998/12/07horo.html
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
I am quite disappointed to hear about your plans to oppose the virginia spam law. I can see why you might see this as a free speech issue, but it most certainly is not. Be aware that there are already laws that charge violators with a $500 per page penalty for sending unauthorized faxes and I think the two situations are analagous. The reason "fax spamming" isn't protected by freedom of speech is because the cost of the speech (paper, ink, busy fax lines) is forced upon the receiver. Spam is precisely like this. Every spam message goes through countless machines on the internet eating up bandwidth and diskspace. This is money, plain and simple. Let me put it another way - would you support telephone soliciting if the calls were collect and the receiver was forced to accept them? The ACLU has done a great many things with regard to freedom of speech (particularly protecting unpopular speech) that I admire but you folks are out of your element here - my guess is that it never occurred to you all that spamming forces a financial burden on people without their permission as I cannot believe you would push forward with this action while in possession of that knowledge.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
I'm not sure who I agree with. Virginia or the ACLU. Although I hate spammers as much as the next person, this might be a step in the wrong direction.
The way I see it, public speech needs to be protected no matter what the cost. Even some idiot advertising free porn on the corner of Main and 3rd street, or whatever. But when a spammer sends spam directly to MY mailbox, I consider that an invasion of privacy. The same goes for telephone solicitors. What if you found your e-mail address or phone number posted on a bathroom wall? (USENet groups are pretty close, but they don't count , when we post our e-mail addys to USENET, we are posting to a group of people we generally trust. If someone posted your e-mail address to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.hamsters, you would most likely get upset.
So I don't know the correct answer. But I think that spammers are violating our rights, and not just because it shifts the cost onto us. If you're in a public place, and someone is speaking, you can just walk away. If you get an e-mail, you have to either read it or delete it. With deceptive subject headers, usually you can't just filter it all.
Josh
Yes, "unsolicited" covers a lot of ground. But, the bill doesn't criminalize unsolicited mail. :)
:)
There are 3 things the law criminalizes:
1. Sending unsolicited *bulk* e-mail in violation of an ISP's policies.
2. Sending UBE with forged headers.
3. Distributing spamware.
The examples you give are highly unlikely to lead to lawsuits under this law, and if they do, they're certain to be laughed out of court.
And yes, bandwidth is "too cheap to meter" on average - but some of us pay a larger share of the bill than others, and some folks (spammers) want everyone else to foot their bill. This helps address that particular inequity. In fact, it'll help keep bandwidth "too cheap to meter" - figures I've seen indicate that of a $19.95/month account, $2-3 a month is necessitated by excess hardware and manpower expenses due to spam.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The only time I've ever seen a "remove" phone number that was 1-800, it was an automated system, and the number was at the bottom of... a junk fax. Well, d'uh, folks. I don't see a loophole in the law saying that you don't have to pay the $500 fine if your junk fax has a 1-800 remove number at the bottom... do you? ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
How many time have we heard, on these very pages, the screams of terror at even the smallest infringement on the rights and privileges of free speech, and online speech specifically? How many times?
The real test of one's devotion to the ideal of constitutionally protected speech (sorry to be US-centric for a moment) is when we must defend free speech even when its purpose, medium, or presentation is not exactly what we'd like.
If you want free speech, and you want it defended, and you want unpopular ideas to still be legal thoughts in your head and legal words in your mouth, than you must defend constitutionally protected free speech even when it comes in the form of spam.
There is no test for constitutionally protected free speech that spam infringes on. Mindless loads of commercial email, while not happy, pretty, or nice, are not fighting words, they do not present clear or present danger, they rarely insight real physical violence.
Most of you don't want free speech, you want to have unlimited personal rights and freedoms and to restrict those same rights and priviledges to people you don't like or disagree with.
The irony is shocking, and it makes me laugh.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
Oh yes it is. Commercial speech is just another form of speech. It might be unpleasant, stupid, ill-informed, and mentally deficient, but than again so are most political commentators whose right to free speech is as real as yours or mine.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
Two things.
Spam doesn't stalk you. It doesn't stand on your lawn at 3am and scream at you. It doesn't walk up behind you and kick you in the head. Those are all physical crimes which are dealt with by other statutes.
Does spam waste CPU cycles. Yes. Does it waste network bandwidth? Does it bring even the best mail servers to their knees on occaison, why yes it does. But so does porn. And most people in this forum would rather die than see the CDA pass again in any form because you recognize pornography as free speech.
Isn't it a little maddening that commercial speech is the greater evil here?
Second, the whole point is that my first amendment rights don't end when I start to make you unconfortable or start to say things that don't make you warm and fuzzy inside. I still have the right to say those things.
Your inbox is yours. So are your ears. I can say things that make you unhappy, and whether I email them to you or I send snail mail, or I whisper them in your ear, they MAY be protected speech.
If I email you something that the Supreme Court has set up as speech that is not protected, and the governmental autority under which we live has regulated that speech, then you have legal reprucussions. Otherwise, you don't have any rights that are being infringed on.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
If we allow the courts to exercise this kind of leverage over net content, even though it appears to be in 'everyone's favor', what will be regulated next? Porn? Mp3's? Objectionable language? Sexism? Racism? Improper server configuration? Bad spelling? (okay, I'm all for jailing people on the last one!) Each of these is a 'hot spot' on someone's hit-list, but in the end it spells out an attempt to reign in and 'civilize' the anarchy of the web.
You consider yourselves sophisticated users? And you can't deflect SPAM?
Shame on you!
Jail time for SPAM appeals to my childish sense of justice, but bodes ill in the long term for everyone.
Congratulations to the ACLU (and I'm a republican!) for standing up for what they think is right.
**>>BELCH
You hook up your computer to the 'information highway' by choice. You repel unwanted guests by turning them away at the door.
**>>BELCH
No, wait. Sorry 'bout that. I totally don't.
Restricting access to YOUR server is YOUR responsibility.
**>>BELCH
There were some very interesting comments here yesterday, but now they're all gone. I looked as far down as threshold -15, but no change.
Oh well. I'll say it again.
Eat My Shorts.
;)
**>>BELCH
does anyone else notice that this is called virgina??? do you suppose this is intentional or accidental?
Marques Johansson
I'm impressed to see how many /. participants understand that liberties must be defended for all, not just the folks you agree with.
I'm a proud (card-carrying) member of the ACLU, and while I would love to see a legal (and constitutional) framework to keep spammers out of my mailbox (and for that matter, telemarketers off my telephone), I understand that may not be possible at the same time as preserving a legal climate and culture that promotes the free and open exchange of ideas... Even unpopular or commercial ones.
Any law involving restriction of speech rights must be subject to a thorough vetting of its constitutionality. If it passes such a test, well and good, but if not, then I'm afraid it was a bad law, and other solutions to the spam problem must be sought.
I hate spammers, and instinctively I would really like to just kick their asses (just like I would like to kick the ass of all those people who just sit on left turn signals at stop lights), but really, shouldn't the punishment fit the crime? Aren't we a "civilized" country? Spamming is more akin to harassment, not assualt or theft. If somebody is guilty of harassment, do they face the possibility of jail time?
--
Mark Fassler
fassler at frii dot com
After re-reading it, the law does say, "distributing software which makes possible the transmission of false e-mail with the intent to facilitate the transmission of false e-mail." So I guess simply offering sendmail for download wouldn't qualify, unless I also had the intent for people to use it as a spam-engine. So that wouldn't affect your average law-abiding non-spamming citizen.
I still have reservations about the constitutionality of it and also whether the punishment really fits the crime.
It's also interesting to note that (as far as I can see) not one single representative voted against it.
--
Mark Fassler
fassler at frii dot com
They can make it illegal to falsify headers. Individual sysadmins and companies could (at their discretion) not accept emails with a missing from: header.
It's constitutional, and it solves most (if not all) spam problems.
--
Mark Fassler
fassler at frii dot com
Among other questionable things, this law criminalizes "distributing software which makes possible the transmission of false e-mail."
http://leg1.s tate.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?ses=991&typ=bil&val =sb881
In other words, your favorite e1eet hackerz site that happens to have a copy of Up Yours or any other mailbombing software is now guilty of a misdemeanor in the state of Virginia and subject to a fine of $1000 for each and every download of that software.
(One could even argue that sendmail itself, that famous MTA built on trust and cooperation instead of verification and security, is software that fits the above description. The following clause requires that it also have "the intent to facilitate the transmission of false e-mail." Would that mean that anyone offering a downloadable copy of sendmail without the antispam provisions built into recent versions is also liable for $1000 per download?)
It is possible to write a good law against spam. This is nowhere near that law. This is a brutally overbroad law which criminalizes a wide range of legitimate and proper activity on the net, and the ACLU deserves our thanks for challenging it.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
....that doesn't allow motorists to carry radar detectors.
(Gotta give MORE power to the troopers, huh?)
Brian
Actually, you are the one looking foolish, posting a link to the same site all over these comments.
Brian
Yes, taking cars from Drunk Drivers is a good thing (IMO).
But the New York law allows SUSPECTED drunk drivers to have their cars taken. WITHOUT a trial or conviction. This is a police state.
Brian
Don't call ME an idiot. I did read the comment, how do you think I knew the links were all to the same place? Perhaps efficient, but very redundant and tiresome. Just because someone doesn't agree with yourpost doesn't mean they didn't read it.
Brian
The CDA could have gotten you arrested for making these indecent comments in a public forum. (Well, in theory). The ACLU fought that law so you could have the right to post stupid indecent comments in a public forum.
The ACLU does get involved in cases where Christians were discrimentated against. I don't know how many cases they've got involved with where Christians _as Christians_ were being discriminated against.
Part of the reason probably is limited resources. A Christian can often rely on the donations of thousands of churchs and several groups such as the Rutherford Institute and the Christian Coalition. Why should ACLU spend its limited funds getting involved?
ACLU takes on a small fraction of the cases its asked to. Just because they can't carry a case means nothing. The CDA was different because it was a major, blatant case they had to take a stand on.
I'm not fully familiar with the postal regs, but putting a false return address on letters is definitely illegal and could constitute forgery or impersonation. Not putting one at all could violate "truth in advertising/labeling" type laws.
-- Old Man Kensey
All they need to do, and I mean all they need to do is FORCE SPAMMERS TO HAVE VALID REPLY-TO ADDRESSES. This is perfectly reasonable, and it would stop spam OVERNIGHT.
All this other legislation is totally ridiculous.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Duh - this IS what they are doing - I hadn't check the bill itself due to it's slashdottedness.
... who cares?
However, the part about the programs being illegal doesn't seem to make sense
support gun control: take guns from cops
I often side with the ACLU on many matters, but I have to disagree with them here. There should be two people put to death: telemarketers and spammers. Period.
Thank you.
What the hell are you talking about? The bulk mailers are PAYING FOR IT. The USPS is MAKING money off of the bulk mail! That would be equiv. to a denial of svc. attack giving MORE bandwidth and CPU time to the person recieving the attack! Hell, in that case fire away!
I'd love it if phone solicitors were outlawed!
Well crap. There goes my whole argument. In THAT case it is close to the same thing since, if they ARE indeed in debt, we will pay for it in the end through taxes.
Make those bulk mailers pay!
Dammit, what good is a cake if you can't eat it? That seems rather unreasonable to me!
But seriously, I agree with your point. There are existing federal laws against hackers (Although they are only barbed if you hack a bank or some other money-tracking system. If someone just hacks your home web server, the law is useless.) which can be used against malicious hackers. However, heavy fines are better than jailtime. The government seems way too concerned with taking away people's freedom lately. We are all subject to the Ostrich Effect - throwing people in jail for non-violent acts like spamming is simply the politicians sticking their heads in the sand. Throw them in jail instead of dealing with the problem.
I personally see it far better for society at large and the environment if we passed laws prohibiting unsolicited physical mail (rlSpam), and allowed only email spam (With regulation on that as well, opt-in rather than opt-out. I think my right to the pursuit of happiness [ie: not having to read spam] overrides some Joe Lamer's "right" to promote some business proposal) instead. Think of how many millions of trees (Probably a lot of rain forest forestation is devoted to this questionable practice) get chopped each year to be turned into crap junk mail.
not like anyone will even read my post or anything.
but i truely wonder why this was posted as if to sound that the aclu is doing something bad?
besides that id rather know when someone has me in there database when they send me spam...
i mean atleast then i can take preventaive mesures to stop it from happening again.
unlike some people who think that you have some form of privacy on the inet... *ha!*
I am a fervent supporter of Constitutional rights and and a supporter of ACLU actions. This letter is to urge you to show restraint in your opposition to laws outlawing unsolicited e-mail, so-called SPAM.
As a thirty-year software developer and a vigorous user of the Internet, I have first hand knowledge that Spam has become one of the most insidious forms of invasion of privacy. There is not one day in which I don't receive unsolicited e-mail for sex, illegal multilevel marketing schemes, and other questionable ventures. This is in spite of the fact that I do not frequent any locations on the Internet in which this kind of thing is topical. These messages gobble up Internet bandwidth at the cost of every system and every user in which they touch.
As a very knowledgeable computer user, I have taken the time and effort to attempt to trace some of these messages back to their origin. What I have found out (and this is common knowledge among Internet users) is that the Spammer often uses deception to disguise their origin, their identity and their intentions. Most often, the technique used is "spoofing," which is to construct a bogus e-mail header with the intention of disguising the identity of the guilty party. To make their e-mail look legit they must necessarily target an existing Internet domain. The company or person providing the service for the targeted domain must then somehow deal with the reprocussions of being a target.
In no other commercial endeavor are advertisements as blatantly dishonest. In no other commercial endeavor would it be tolerated to use another's good name to foist commercial messages on an unwilling public. These practices deserve to be illegal and should be penalized severely.
AOL, based in Virginia, is a target of many Spammer attacks because their visibility allows the Spammer to remain relatively invisible. That's why Spammers choose the big guys as targets. However, every server on the Net is subject to these attacks. Even my little server on a dial-up line has been attacked. Nobody is immune. Fighting this kind of thing has been costly for me and I have no doubt that it has been very costly to AOL.
These activities are intolerable to any Internet provider. They have a real cost in handling complaints and for providing the additional security necessary to block the attacks. The state of Virginia, acting on behalf of their citizens and businesses, including America On-Line, has the right to make these kind of activities illegal. But, how does one do this without infringing on the very freedoms which the Internet provides. With this technology we may be treading on new ground here.
I am not a Constitutional scholar, nor have I read all the arguments for and against the new Virginia Spammer law. However, I would urge you to take a strong position opposing the practice of using the public forum of the Internet as a free-for-all to dishonestly foist strictly commercial messages on the public. In this age of instant Internet communications, one person's right to free speech must be tempered by another's right to privacy and the right not to have any just any transmission crammed down their throats.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Regards,
Arne W. Flones
Define 'malicious'... There are already laws in place for 'malicious' spammers who attempt 'denial of service' attacks. Besides 'denial of service' problems, how can spammers be differentiated between 'malicious' and 'non-malicious'?
Too many of you people want your cake and eat it too...
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
What makes them malicious? Just because you don't like the fact that you receive the email?
Have you tried getting yourself removed from their list?
I received that same E-mail to only one of my email addresses. I get it maybe once a month. The PORN SPAM I get daily comes to just one address - an AOL address I used in chat rooms. I think I know where they got my email address. My other email addresses, I get very little SPAM (an alternate AOL address has gotten 1 SPAM telling me about some local community involvement group in the last 2 months.) So I ignore it and it doesn't become a problem.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
By mass-mailing junk mail, I am taking time away from the processing of other 'real' mail. The more Junk mail produced, the more postal employees have to be hired (or time to get my 'real' mail gets longer.) Gee, that sounds similar to a 'denial of service' attack.
I guess that means you are wrong.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
I just don't believe that Virginia has the power to do this.
Yes, they can pass the law, but I don't believe it will be as far-reaching as they would like.
Virginia will only be able to stop spammers that commit their offence (not including the reply-to in this case, if my understanding is correct) in Virginia itself. Virginia can't come to, say, California, and arrest a spammer whose crime happened to have some effect across the border.
It should be a national law.
Then only outlaws will spam.
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
I'm much more concerned about junk snail mail than easily trashed spam. I don't want to give up any rights to fight this minor annoyance. Further, much of the beauty of the net is it's relative freedom from governmental intervention. It can't stay that way forever but let's not hasten the end of it's "Golden Age".
-Steve
The proposed law defines malicious spamming as any spamming action that causes the victim more than $2500 damage. (i.e., AOL users get mass-spammed, sucking AOL resources... if the cost of handling the spam >$2500, AOL can sue the spammer for punitive damages. Basically.)
marijane
--
marijane
the most glaring being 'war on drugs', that is not
only violating freedoms, but costs a lot of human
lifes, not to mention the prolifiration of
narcotics, as a result of trivial market action
(the cost of the drugs is inflated by the
government effort to banish them, which make
dealing them so profitable). A honorable mention
would also be cryptography. What about the ban
to receive certain radio frequncies, like cell
phones, which are not encrypted in the first place
because of the desire of CIA,NSA and FBI to be
able to listen to cell phones at their leisure?
Vassili Leonov
...and then they change their address to something else so that you can't block them. if I weren't so nice (yeah. sure.) I would try to track them down and bomb their list into oblivion...
Lea
well, actually, they are required to remove you if you ask and provide a valid address to do so. whether most of them do or not is a separate issue -- becasue even if they say they do, most of them provide false and broken email addresses and change often so you can't block them for long.
/.? I don't think so. Geocities is one of the many who have gone over the line...)
it's really a pity that a medium with so much promise for commerce, as well as everything else, can be so misused that ANYTHING relating begins to leave a bad taste in people's mouth. spammers are hurting other ecommerce by their example, just as Geocities is hurting other sites that use banners by making them so obnoxious. (think about it -- would you have gotten that banner blocking software just to protest nice unobtrusive ad's like
*grrr*
just one of those annoyances in life. guess we all have to deal with it.
"Little bunny Lea/hopping through the forest/picking up the SPAMMERS/and BASHING them ON THE HEAD"
(not to mention Geocities)
"the problem with standing up for free speech is you end up defending sons-of-bitches" - I don't know who said that, but it applies here.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but jail terms for email spamming is more than a little ridiculous. I have to side with the ACLU on this one. If you would rather have government control over mail transfer than do a little exercise with your delete-key finger, you should have your head examined.
0 1 - just my two bits
You get spam from companies????????
Amazing. All I ever get spam from is:
Idiots selling vitamins.
Idiots selling viagra substitutes
Idiots selling e-mail lists
Idiots selling horny women
Idiots selling horny men
Idiots selling e-mail harvesting programs
Idiots selling Ponzi schemes
I never get e-mail from a real company.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Law???? Heee Heee that funny!
The spammers put that on their mail to deflect the stupid people who believe that there is some kind of law that they need to comply with. The smart ones still read the headers, do a traceroute, and complain to every ISP in the chain.
att.net sucks. Those people cannot control their network. cw.net is the same. Sorry. I had to release pressure from my venom sacs.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I hate the ACLU.
I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh, actually. I just find it interesting the way the ACLU picks and chooses the laws it challenges.
I should probably be a little more clear...
I don't think this anti-spam law is the right way to go. So I would support the ACLU on this one. Generally though, I don't like them. Specific examples? I'll go with the most controversial one: abortion.
Disclaimer:
If you reply, keep in mind that the topic isn't specifically about abortion and Slashdot isn't the place to debate it. Usually each side just becomes further entrenched in their opinions...
For the people above who are equating SPAM with other forms of mass advertising (flyers, junk snail mail, phone calls) there is one key difference. There is a TANGIBLE COST to spam for the receiver and their providers. The cost is usually more per piece than the person sending it is paying!
That's a fine assertion to make when we're speaking of the unsolicited pizza and drycleaning coupons that turn up in our mailboxes at home. The value of the labor required to crumple that up and throw it away is negligible.
On the other hand, I work at a school. Our teachers are frequently blanket-mailed offers for seminars, the latest instructional software, insurance, etc. They don't ask for it. It comes because someone sold or otherwise released a list of teachers at our school. Some people we get mail for have been gone for years, which is a testimony to how little we can do to close the barn door now. The horse wandered out several years ago.
Is the mailman taking the unsolicited mail and putting it in each teacher's box? Nope. It's addressed to the high school. He leaves it at the door. Instead, the clericals are left putting it out. They don't work for free.
Just deciding to tell the secretaries to toss it isn't a good idea, either. That's tampering with the mail. So the taxpayers get to pay for a secretary to deal with it for at least an hour a day, every day. I imagine our school isn't alone in dealing with this, and I suppose in the private sector there's a similar issue. Experience with the military tells me the same: the unit mail clerks often have to deal with a bulk-mailing that happened because some scummy used car dealership bought a unit's alpha roster at $.10 a name and went crazy with the label maker and copy machine.
I don't think spam and unsolicited snail mail are that different. They can both cost the recipient depending on the context in which they're distributed.
----------
pudding_yeti@yahoo.com
"Give me $20 worth of pudding, or kill me."
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
While I agree that the first amendment is *extremely* important, I don't think that laws against spam violate that amendment.
Using snail mail as an example, would you like to pay postage due on all the junk mail you recieve?
To those without per minute charges or bandwidth limits, spam is merely an annoyance. But if you have to pay (per bit, whatever), it becomes a real issue of cost. This will be aggravated even more if the phone co's get the interstate charges they want from ISPs.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
from the Library of Congress Website thomas.loc.gov. Lots of good info there, you should check it out.
Amendment XIV
(1868)
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they
reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state,
excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States,
Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such
state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of
age in such state.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the
United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state
legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against
the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in
suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid
of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held
illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
If I put up a suggestion box in my hypothetical store, does that give people the right to dump ads in it? Nope.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
argh, the ACLU can make you happy one day fighting for the little guy who can't do it (or afford the legal fees) on his own, and the next day you find them acting as whore for spammers.
No, I'm not joking about this. I am against this rule from a start. No I'm not a spammer, and yes, I do anything in my power to keep my e-mail from getting outside my small circle of close friends. The reason this laws is bad is that it sets a precedent.
You are all being hypocrites when you scream and fit when congress passes the "CDA" or "COPA (CDAII)", but praise the fucking lord when it passes a law which does something equally illegal, but which you have support for. Spamming is communication. Unwanted communication? YES. Annoying communication? YES. Illegal communication? NO.. until now! While spamming might tick the socks off of you, it is still just an individual/company communicating with you. Set up a filter if you dont want your mail being bombarded. Ask for laws which safeguard your privacy, but not for those which restrict the freedoms of others.
btw, it's VirginIa.
Case 1: Law passes
-Spammers get out of state/country accounts
-You still get spam
Case 2: Law fails
-You still get spam
It just doesn't matter.
What's worse is if we lose any rights due to this. But just based on stopping spam, a law won't help.
--
Four years in jail
No Trial, No Bail
New worlds are not born in the vacuum of abstract
ideas, but in the fight for daily bread --Rudolf Rocke
\
:)
From the point of criminalize unsolicited phone calls... They are criminalized in most states. You have the 3 strikes rule and if you can document that you requested to not be solicited again those three times you can have legal action initiated.
I don't mind someone calling once, or e-mailing once... if they do it a second time and it's accidental, I don't mind either... but I'm fraggin tired of being told I can quit my job and make 400K per day simply spamming people if I buy this magical CD of e-mail addresses... The e-mails have no way to remove yourself from the list, they have no real reply address, the headers are spoofed or sent from an account that was dropped (wisely) by their ISP in a matter of days (Hours?). The contact information is rarely accurate and the spam to the best of my knowledge does nothing but suck bandwidth that I could be using to whoop yer arse in Q2
\
one might as well criminalize unsolicited phone calls, unsolicited postal mail, unsolicited pages, as well as the communication of any other content that someone might not want to receive.
Zanthor
I was a little disappointed to see Hemo's statements. While I can sympathize with wanting to do something about SPAM, when I read the law I don't think it is the right kind of legislature to deal with the problem.
:P
This is from the summery:
The bill also adds the following to the list of those acts constituting use without authority or computer trespass: (i) using the services of an electronic mail service provider in contravention of the authority granted by or in violation of the policies set by the electronic mail service provider; (ii) falsifying e-mail transmission information in connection with the transmission of unsolicited bulk e-mail; and (iii) selling or distributing software which makes possible the transmission of false e-mail with the intent to facilitate the transmission of false e-mail.
---
As some other posters have already stated, "false email" is too vaguely defined and could be argued to encompass even legitimate domain masquerading. It should be much better defined.
What I really object to though, is clause '1'. I think spamming should only be illegal when it's done for malicious (DOS) purposes or as unsolicited *commercial* advertisements. I don't think email should be illegal simply because it was against the recipient's "usage policy". That's where I see possible violation of freedom of speech.
I also don't think the law should outlaw anonymous remailers. These have their legitimate uses. I don't think that it does, but I would like the definition of "false email" clarified so there's no room for doubt.
I am not a lawyer, I know that my arguements are not black and white. Please flame gently
- OT
Seriously! (I'm the moron who posted about the First Amendment vs. spam above, and I now think I was probably wrong, but I'm gonna play devil's advocate and agree with myself anyway
Sooner or later, the courts will have to decide in a case that's right on the border. What then? Bear in mind that the "border" is miles wide, because the courts don't know shit about software. For all we know, a really sharp DA (sharp as a *lawyer*, I mean; morally he'd be a moron) could indeed demonstrate to the satisfaction of a judge and/or jury that sendmail's primary purpose is falsifying routing information. How many small-town judges are there in this country who "don't hold with that there innernet"? It's not a good thought.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I dunno, but what about anonymous remailers?
Then you're into "proving intent" and that's a mare's nest if ever I saw one. I'm not a lawyer, of course; I just play with myself in front of the TV.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I have a pretty dim view of this group. They seem to only embrace liberal causes. :)
And of course, I'm still waiting for them to start defending our second amendment rights
It is possible to win a suit against telephone harassment, why not e-mail harassment as well?
Does anyone remember a story where the gov't of China jailed some guy for "spamming" other civil rights workers and organizers and their friends and family about civil rights? Or did I just completely lose it?
Does anyone remember a story where the gov't of China jailed some guy for "spamming" other civil rights workers and organizers and their friends and family about civil rights? Or did I just completely lose it?
h tml
Nope, I didn't lose it. Here it is:
http://slashdot.org/articles/98/12/04/1132244.s
The law is a step in the right direction, but there are many problems, and caveats, along the way.
First and foremost, as with all things 'legal', it's going to be a matter of MONEY. The only people that will be able to substantiate suffering from SPAM, will be those that can demonstrate a financial loss caused by unsolicited email.. ISPs are most probably the only ones to really benefit from this law - by citing wasted bandwidth, storage and processing requirements, and disgruntled former subscribers. The fact that AOL is based in Virginia pretty much seals it. If we look close enough, I'm sure that AOL will turn out to be the driving force (lobby) behind the bill.
Secondly, just what constitutes 'malicious' SPAM? Is it a mass-mailing targetting over a certain number of users on a particular domain? Is it subject matter? One man's SPAM is another's newsletter or business opportunity. Is 'unsolicited' really the key phrase?
I think that this is a financially driven effort that will not benefit consumers in the long run.
A foolproof definition of SPAM is required before it can be regulated.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Bulk mailers pay significantly less for USPS services then do individual consumers. It's an economies of scale approach that has outlived it's usefulness.
If the bulk mailers were to pay the current 33 cent / envelope cost, we'd all get fewer trees in the mail. But then they too would resort to eSPAM.
As for the gov making money on postage - well... They make money through taxes and subsidize the Postal Service.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
And why nail everyone between you and him with your vengence.
:)
The DELETE button works well, and takes less time then picking through the headers, verifying addresses...
-- If you ignore him, he'll go away. If you find him, and KILL HIM, he'll never come back.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I agree that the passive approach doesn't get the point across, but my time is too valuable for me to look at full headers, figure out where it REALLY came from (though that's not even possible in some cases) and sending a nastygram to the postmaster there.
.hk, .tw etc, but that doesn't work well either, since there's plenty of people I might like to hear from overseas..
.nl and .de - and US laws are not enforcable out there. And...
Further, setting up an intelligent filter doesn't get rid of the problem either, since at best, you'll never get spam from that specific address or site - spammers jump around too much for that to be a definitive filter. And blanketting out whole domain is too heavy handed. Though I hate to admit it, I have friends on uunet, and other spammer favored sites.
I do kill all mail that comes from
Legislation would solve the problem if
a) spam were not an international nuisance - as I get as much crap from the orient as I do from
b) spam could be clearly defined, which it can't. If it could, I'd have a reliable filter in place already, and it would be a moot point for me. But, there's no specific site to be regulated, no verbage to be pinned down in the messages, nothing to clearly define it.
And I HAVE actually gotten useful spam. After registering a product, I've gotten unsolicited upgrade offers, seminar invitations, pointers to related resources... Same stuff I'd get in the mail - some of which I've been interested in.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
f you ignore it, you'll only be inviting more. it's not that the spammers say "Oh gee, he didn't
respond, i guess we won't e-mail him again". You're on a mailing list. No one bothers to check it.
True. I've seen a tool that will forge an 'address not valid' response, but it all depends on the logic (or lack thereof) on the other end. Besides, a forged self-defense reply is no better then a false original, right?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
You see it everywhere you go...it clutters your (snail) mailbox, your email box, the roadsides, the countrysides, your favorite stock-car driver, it is everywhere: ADVERTISING. It is an insideous plague that attempts to blind us with unwanted messages. It is like someone following you around all day long speaking nonsense into your ear. It has corrupted politics (Clinton took money from whom to do what?) and even basic economics (Why make the best product? We'll just have the best advertising!)
Why is OOP popular? Because it hides the implementation details. It makes things simpler. What does advertising do? It makes things harder. What kind of deoderant should I buy? Well, I'm only familiar with 50 different brands, too bad I can't remember which one was voted best by Consumer Reports!!!
Every message we process is a tax on our brains. If advertisers had their way, we would spend all day immersed in cutesy copyrighted slogans and names, sucking the teat of Brand Recognition, till we spend so little time on the things that matter (life, love, pursuit of happiness) that we hose down our neighbors with AK-47s. Unnecessary processing of advertising messages should be OUTLAWED!!!
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
You see how insideous this advertising stuff is?!! I'm even doing it when I'm ranting against it!!!
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
See my other comments here
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
Stop posting links to your earlier message. It's
really fucking annoying.
I have friends who use AOL and when they get spam in there email they really get spam. I had a friend who went away for 2 weeks and when he came back he had over 200 email in his inbox and it was almost all spam, as most of his friends new he was a way. This is is a real problam in his case.
People talk about rights and the first ammendment. What does the first ammendment have to do with SPAM? Is it a spammers right to send me XXX links? What about the children that get there own email accounts, that then get XXX spam?
What about this 'loose weight' crap?
What about the ISP's that get overloaded with SPAM ?
I have email accounts for MY usage NOT a spammers USAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!
I should not have to sign up NOT to recieve spam. If I want porn I'll use a dam search engine, they always turn up porn sites. If I want to loose weight then I'll do a search on loosing weight damit.
I live in Virginia, and I think it is great that they are WANT to stop spam so badly. (AOL is in VA too by the way.)
I however do not think that they have a clue about what they are trying to do. How are they going to stop spamers in other states or countries???
I hate watching my inbox fill up and then haveing to delete all that crap. It is a waste of time. MY TIME and I woudl personally like to charge every spammer for my time of deleting there spam. If I had a penny for each peice of spam that I recieved I might be richer than Bill Gates!
Only 'flamers' flame!
See: MAPS Realtime Blackhole List
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm from Europe so no expert on that first amendment, but isn't it just about "free speech"? So what on earth has "free speech" got to do with the right to force yourself into peoples home to "speak" to them? (not to mention that it's about marketing, not "speech" as such). In my ears "free speech" doesn't mean "free to force everybody to listen". It should be about being free to speak to whoever wants to listen. No?
Whoa there. That would be crazy, agreed. You don't need sendmail or any mail software *at all* to forge an address, so that's bogus anyway. You would have to make the whole SMTP protocol illegal.
You can also end (most) of the credit-card offers. Here are my notes from when I did this last year. Some of this information might be out of date...
Notify each of the three credit reporting companies (Equifax, [800] 556-4711; Experian, formerly TRW, [800] 353-0809; and Trans Union, [800] 680-7293) that you don't want your name sold to other marketers
According to the Trans Union recording, if you opt out of one you opt out of all 3. The other two don't mention this (it's all done by voicemail --- they send you something in the mail to verify your information).
You can't reasonably expect to kill 100% of it without some pretty undesirable side-effects.
The solution is not to simply hit the DELETE button (the spammer's solution) nor create new crimes. Virtually every ISP out there has an anti-spam policy. Use it: Read the headers, find the guy's ISP, send them the spam, and he's cancelled, and hopefully out some money. Though please: Make sure the spam is fresh! Reporting old spams just wastes the ISP's time. Figure a spammer sends to 50,000 people in an hour. You've gotta figure at least a couple are going to see the message immediately or within an hour or two and report it. If you don't read your mail over the weekend and notice you have a spam from friday night, forget it: The spammer was probably cancelled saturday morning.
Spam can already be dealt with by enforcing contracts with terms of service and with civil lawsuits on the basis of theft of service.
Of course, if you are running an open relay and someone uses it to spam the world, then you're just a victim of your own stupidity.
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
Of course you can yell "fire!" in a crowded public area and get away with it. Especially if it's on fire.
The judge who wrote the whole "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" thing changed his mind a few days later, but some folks just love to quote it anyway. Also, I'm familar with the Bill of Rights, but I've yet to see anyone produce the much-touted Bill of Responsibilities.
There are plenty of legal remedies against spammers already using existing law.
And, if your mail server really got hijacked by spammers, you have only me to blame.
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
Got your attention? Good.
I see a lot of /.ers spouting that spam is commercial speech, so it isn't protected by the first amendement. This is dead WRONG. Granted, it does not get the same degree of protection as politcal speech. Think about this: If commercial speech had no first amendment protection, then the selling of books could be regulated or banned.
From this page
Need more info? Search Google!
Now although the content of the spam is sometimes going to be protected (there's a lot promoting all sorts of bogus crap, which would not be protected), the methodology for sending spam is not always legal. If you are relaying off someone server without permission, you are committing theft of service. IANAL, and theft of service may or may not be a criminal offense, but would at least by actionable in a civil case. Sending spam without using a relay is almost certainly going to be a violation of contract with the ISP (terms of service almost always prohibit spamming), and this is enforcable by the courts. Some of these spammers get throwaway accounts using stolen credit cards. Guess what, that's also already a crime in and of itself.
And as someone else has pointed out, the law doesn't prohibit spamming at all. You can still spam using a throwaway ISP account, start up a HotMail account to direct bounces or send remove requests to (it's a real place to receive e-mail that you control, so it probably is within the law), and spam until you get cancelled without much worry about being arrested.
What's more, the spammers who do this for a living aren't going to be hurt by this. They'll have lawyers and if they're careful in how they spam, they'll get away with it.
Basically, this is about as bad as the anti-spam bill that (fortunately) died in congress last year in that both essentially legitimize the practice of spamming. I sure which I had a dollar for every spam I received that claimed they were an "ethical bulk e-mailer" (oxymoron) in compliance with S.1618, the Murkokowski bill. Barf. I'm already seeing the same spiel for California and Washington.
Regulating spammers will help spammers, and will probably hurt everyone else in the long run. Spammers should be stopped, but through Terms of Service agreements and theft-of-service prosecution.
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
> when we start talking about JAIL TIME...we've gone too far.
Um, jail time *if they are convicted and sentenced*. It's still just a law, they haven't thrown out the whole trial system.
How about this -- would you like to keep getting those long-distance and credit-card phone calls if they were calling collect? "Free speech" is fine, as long as I don't have to foot the bill.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Good lord, Keep It Simple, Stupid.
/. forums.
Make it unlawful to
A) Forge a header on a commercial mailing or posting.
(Legit Anon services already have spam checks in place to stop bulk sending through their resources.)
B) Send unsolicited commercial postings to any person or forum.
(Forums could 'request' such postings via a charter / motd / etc)
and while we're at it...
C) Post any 'FIRST!' msg's on
-TF
Yes, spam sucks. Yes, it would be nice to find a reasonable way to stop it. However, the fact that spamming costs you money indirectly is, in and of itself, not justification to stop spamming at any cost. The argument that "we have every right to make spam illegal because spam takes up disk space and network bandwidth that I have to pay for" is not very different from the argument that "those protestors shouldn't be allowed to picket Home Depot because it took me 1.5 seconds longer for me to get my plywood, and time is money."
We need to be cautious about the measures that we take to stop spamming, because the decay of constitutional rights almost always comes from very popular causes, like stopping racism, drunk driving, drugs, anything non-Christian, and now spam. In fighting for popular causes, it's easy to get carried away ("DEATH TO SPAMMERS!!!!") and trade away important rights. It's important to remember that all freedoms have a cost--you could prevent a lot of murders by not allowing anyone to leave their house after 7pm, for example.
As for being cautious, how many people read the bill before posting? It is the implementation that the ACLU is opposing; they are not necessarily opposed to the possibility of preventing spam. Also, even if this bill does happen to be good and constitutional, what the ACLU is doing is not wrong; they are just putting the constitutionality of this bill to the test. If the courts decide that the bill is constitutional, so be it.
I'd be happier if the spammers were legally required to remove you from their lists and propagate the removal up to the original source and send you a report of each removal and the original source.
Then those "one-time" spammers would be forced to have you removed from the list of whoever they bought their list from.
The next step is to penalize the harvesting of email from "public materials" such as list email, newsgroup postings, and web pages.
The last step is to require email collectors to use language equivalent to a contract when they collect the email address from the user. This way the user will know what the other party intends to do with their email address (or other personal information). This might be good for other industries that collect personal information (catalog sales, cable companies, phone companies, etc)
I definitely think there should be the ability to send email without revealing your identity, but it should be distinguishable from people who have a valid identity, and easily blockable.
> All software is broken.
I think you guys are missing the point. The article said "malicious spammers". Exactly what does that mean? My guess is the the ACLU feels that the term "malicious spammers" is far too general, and is atempting to have the bill modified.
If someone spams your mailbox to the point where the server drops, it's the same as dropping a cherry-bomb in a regular mailbox. They're both against the law.
Junk mail, however, is protected by the 1st amendment. Therefore, if you get one of the annoying messages from some porn site, it's legal (provided they don't send you porn!).
The real question comes down to where we draw the line. Spaming could be seen as a breach of personal privcay, denial-of-service, and other things.
I suggest anyone who wants to know why the ACLU is against this law visit their website at:
http://www.aclu.org
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
You are absolutely right, Spammers shouldn't be jailed, they should be shot.
;-)
PeterT
the contention that spam is "cramming" speech "down your throat" is just amazingly stupid. when was the last time you actually read the full text of an unsolicited email? if ever, would you say that you were forced to read it?
one might as well criminalize unsolicited phone calls, unsolicited postal mail, unsolicited pages, as well as the communication of any other content that someone might not want to receive.
then i'll tell you what -- don't maintain an email address. or, if you do, don't distribute it to anyone who potententially may one day send you text which you think you might possibly not want to read.
i have to say, you read saracasm like alanis morissette reads irony..
By an ISP trying to get me to switch from my (much better) ISP! You'd think they would have known better. And the return address was valid too. You better believe I flamed 'em (and forwarded a copy to the RBL).
Actually, there's a great service that will sort through the headers for you, and notify the right abuse or postmaster address.
It's........Spam Cop.
Those of you who are whining so much about spam expose the fact that you couldn't program your way out of an autoexec.bat. A real programmer has written his (her) own spam filter which kills by address and by content -- just for kicks.
For you AC script kiddies on AOL I have no sympathy. Don't expect to restrict our first
amendment rights (you don't think any such legislation is narrow and with out subversive amendments do you? I have some wonderful designs for perpetual motion machines for sale which you might be interested in...) because you are too klewless to deal with the effects of your own "Me too!" usenet posts.
Give us a break!
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
The difference is that spam is unwanted. Perhaps you might have your emails to people who don't like you curtailed, but not the ones that people want.
I mean, hell, I like porn just as much as the next guy, but I'm quite sick of the sheer volume of spam that I get. Hell, I get spam for even educational teaching aids for high school teachers! How does that happen!?
I think more states need laws like this. At least it's meant against malicious spammers.
The ACLU makes sure that someone tests /.ers suddenly
the constitutionality of new laws. If the law
is just (as I think it is, though I haven't read
the text of it) then ACLU will lose. If it isn't
then they deserve to win. Are
trusting legislators to pass good laws? Don't
they want someone to keep the gov't in line?
--Denis "card-carrying" Moskowitz
I read it the first time. And the second time, before I realized it was just more spam. I fully support your right to post it not only once, but repeatedly, and to post links to it, regardless of the fact that you use an infintesimal amount of MY costly bandwidth to do so -- thereby indirectly costing me a small amount of money without my explicit permission. Unfortunately, I can't send you a bill for it, because I used an HTTP GET command to *ASK FOR IT*. The same applies to junk mail I recieve on my POP3 email box. According to RFC 1725, 'RETR x' means I WANT to download x.
Luckily, free speech is a two way street, giving me the unalienable right to tell you: Knock off the dumb x!=y BS, and say something original or shut the hell up. We read your message already. Do they not let you talk at home or something?
--Ivan (stingray@2xtreme.net)
---
The statement below is true.
Yes, the ACLU defends even the bible thumpers, who routinely of forget this kindness.
No worries. We're all gonna die on new years when the latest prophecies assert themselves.
In the meanwhile, I'm busy looking for homosexual teletubbies. Whom the ACLU will also be defending shortly.
Guy Cole (KQ6J) * "Expert Plain And Fancy Bit Twiddling" * gsc@acm.org
does this mean they can lock up those horrible people from Domino's who keep snail-mailing me ads? and what about those credit card companies? while we're on the subject of unsolicited advertising, how about those religious nuts who hand out pamplets on street corners? i want to be allowed to shoot them on sight. in fact, maybe we should even extend this law to people who speak too loudly in public.
:)
my point is, unsolicited communications maybe annoying but they're still protected by the constitution. if you start chipping away at the first amendment it won't be long until you yourself start feeling it.
-- neil
p.s. if the law does get passed, it'd at least be nice to see those idiots i went to high school with behind bars for mass e-mail ascii pictures of roses and crap like that.
While I don't like spam, I really doubt it should be made a jail-time offense.
I would just like a law which requires ALL spammers and people who sell mass-emailing lists to allow me to remove myself from their lists. Or possibley a law which states that requires spam to be identifable in some way which allows for ISPs do delete it before I get it. I have no doubt that commercial spam can be used effectively and in good taste, just don't force people to receive it. Most of the spam I get either doesn't have a remove option or, if it does, the recepients mail account is too full that when I reply my request is rejected.
And for all the people who say that junk snail mail and unsolicited door-to-door selling is just as annoying, I'd like to tell you that you can stop most of it. The post office will stop sending you junk email if you ask, most credit card companies and other direct marketers will take you off their lists if you ask. As for door-to-door sales, if you live in an appartment complain to the management and they can restrict that too, if you own your own home contact your local lawmakers and ask them to require a permit (believe it or not red-tape and registration fees will stop a tremendous amount of it).
I don't think that any law will ever stop all spam and I don't think it should be totally illegal. I just think there should be a way to turn it off if you don't want it. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that I need to listen to you, it just means that you can talk.
Imagine that you are a sysadmin grunt at a large corporation. Your boss asks you to send out his "marketing emails". I'm sure a lot of us have faced this sort of request. Does that mean that we are criminally liable if a judge determines it to be spam? Will we end up in court? Will the company be able to shift the blame to the individual who pushed the button? When you look at it that way, I'm sure this law will be against the self-interest of a lot of people reading this thread.
Alexium - open source software and articles for web publishers
gotta agree. What if the state of Virginia decides to define spam to include any email that contains the words "bomb" or "terrorist." This sounds like a good idea, but I believe this is the responsibility of the ISP's, not of the government. Scarry stuff.
-davek
homepage
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
"Government of the people, by the people and for the people."
Those of us in the USA ARE our government. I'm sick and tired of hearing "keep the government in line" and other such nonsense. I am the government, you are the government, etc. That's the whole idea. If you don't like the law, you should have written to your representative to protest it before it was passed! If you don't like your representative don't vote for him/her! We have the responsibility, let's use it! Sorry for the offtopic rant, this just pushes my buttons.
When was the last time you were forced to spend time and bandwidth downloading it because you can't decide which email you want to pull down from the server until it gets there?
Well then...I suppose the tobacco companies should go to court to get back the right to air their free speech on television. After all, if advertising is covered under the first amendment, then they could sue the crap out of the government for violating their civil rights all these years with that TV ad ban. The issue here is not free speech, the issue is making private corporations and individuals who have expressed no interest in your speech propagate it at their own cost. If you want to go sign up for junkmail lists, be my guest but count me out.
Darn!!! Guess I gotta go get rid of all my chlorine bleach and take that nasty gasoline out of my car :) After, these are two substances that are much too dangerous to let the average person have access to...what a crock!
Fine...I'll take whatever spam somebody wants to send me...as long as they are legally required to reimburse my/my provider's cost for the transmission and delivery of that mail...I could be raking in the bucks by the end of the year :)
AAArrrggghhh.....
It is a first amendment issue.......
and most ads are harassment....
I f*cking (---creative censorship) hate spam
but criminalizing it.... ?
what happens when the jokes i send out on an irregular basis to about 20ppl (with consent) gets fowarded (intentionally or otherwise) to someone who says no!! this is spam and my name is at the top of the list??? Do i mutter and pay my fine or go to jail?
What about the time you accidentally sent email to the wron person by mistypin the addy... what if they didn't like tha content... sapm again... suddenly you r a criminal....
nope....
screw this law
im moving out of virginia
In my opinion, the issue is not what spammers are saying, it's how they're saying it. They can advertise all they want and say whatever they want but perhaps not in my mailbox.
I don't really have enough information at the moment to form an opinion on the law itself but I would disagree that spam is just free speech.
>:]
We should all let the ACLU know what we think about this on the ACLU Freedom Network Feedback form.
Agreed. Let's all congratulate the ACLU for continuing to stand up for their beliefs.
it ain't the contents of spam that is a problem, its the delivery and deception that is the problem
e to the i pi equals negative one
I don't care if the contents are a plea for some political cause, an advertisement for a lexus, or a badly misspelled smut page link, if you are forcing me to spend time to deal with your message, what you are doing is NOT PROTECTED SPEECH. You DON'T have permission from me to force me to take time to deal with trying to ignore you.
Its not the contents of spam that is the problem, it is the underhanded ways that spammers use to try to force their message into MY TIME.
If you use methods that prevent my reasonable efforts in filtering email I don't want to see, then I should be able to seek redress. PERIOD
e to the i pi equals negative one
You're overlooking the subtle difference. In the case of junk mail, the PO is compensated for the service it is providing. The excessive junk mail in your example will in part, at least, fund the hiring of the new workers needed to process it.
Spam is a denial of service without any due compensation, which is where the whole "theft" argument is coming from.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Do we want to open the door to a raft of laws specifying criminal penalties for misuse of protocols? Could a law prescribing jail time for "falsifying routing information" be used to lock up hackers, or someone experimenting with or in contention with internet "authorities", or perhaps subversives the prosecutors wanted to silence, based on technical violations that had nothing to do with spamming? Criminalizing *any* use of protocols is a very dangerous idea -- it's inviting the government into an arena where "enforcement" has always been by consensus, not by the FBI. Not only could this law threaten free speech, it could make the the net a dangerous place to experiment with protocol variations, and set the precedent for even more dangerous laws. Making good law is all about avoiding bad precedent. In China, they just jailed an internet dissident for releasing a list of email addresses. No doubt they will claim it's just to protect citizens from spam! As usual, the ACLU is more farsighted than its shoot-from-the-hip critics on this one. If Jews in Skokie have to live with Nazis marching down main street (and they do, thanks to the ACLU), then we may have to live with spam. Civil liberties are cheap at such a price -- be glad you can still purchase them at any price.
"The Internet is a sphere whose center is wherever there is intelligence." (Apologies to HDT.)
The problem with spam is that ISP's and their customers pay for the spam, not the spammer.
A "junk-mail" approach should be taken - if I want to snail-mail junk, I pay. You get it delivered free to your door (so that you can efficiently recycle it).
If I want to send spam, I should be charged by the byte. If I receive spam, I should get a credit by my ISP.
ISP's should set up "spam" accounts. Spammers can use these accounts, and pay appropriately.
When mail leaves the ISP (to another ISP), it's logged. The originating ISP sends electronic cash once a month to the recieving ISP.
The recieving ISP knows that the mail was spam, and credits the account of the reciever, skimming a percentage off the top to pay for the mail-server usage, etc.
If spam is sent out OUTSIDE a spam account, then the spammer's ass ends up in jail.
Sounds crazy, but it might work...
if you show up at the post office to mail something, they won't take it unless it has a return address. i've tried ;).
Although I've never had a personal problem with spam, it's no good. We know this. What we don't need is a law against it. People shouldn't abuse the most powerful communication tool availible today. Simple as that.
the first step towards effective anarchy is responsible citizenship.
Does the ACLU consider that spammers deny their victims their freedoms:
(1) Email forgeries - Sending their spam with their victims' email addresses forged.
(2) Denial of Service Attacks on their victims
(3) Ruin victim's reputations
(4) Physical assault
(5) Deny/occupy/displace victims' time and bandwith.
All of the above, and more, has been well documented over time; Consolidated, organized efforts of the spam industry did items 1,2, & 3 to me 3 years ago and I'm still enduring the aftermath. Don't think for one minute that the spam industry is not well-organized until you see what they can collectively do to a victim they single out to make an example out of. I am still paying the price for disagreeing with one of them, and they are graciously allowing me to remain alive.
Junk mail.. That's a waiste of resources, but yet it's still legal.. I think I get more junk mail than spam mail..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Would I irritate you just by writing some software like that? Can you use your Spidey-Senses to tell when I am doing it? NO!
I am against any law that bans technology instead of addressing the improper use of that technology. Any of you who like to listen to MP3s should be in complete agreement with me.
But then again, they're Virginians, and I live in California. They can screw themselves as long as it doesn't affect me. When it does affect me, it's a different matter.
Note: I am a member of the ACLU and if they can show to me that this law is unconstitutional, I will back them. If preserving my first amendment rights were as easy as hitting the 'D' key, I would be a very happy man.
Is not.
if only it was like this universally :)
i used to get spam everyday from *@aol.com, so i setup procmail to forward everything from aol.com to postmaster@aol.com, after 2 weeks, it stopped, woo!
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
when you get spam from people and it has like, where to send the money for something... just go there :>
pay them a nice visit... *smACK*
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
SPAM is NOT protected speech...it is commercial speech and can be regulated.
SPAM is NOT the same as junk snail mail because the spammers do NOT bear the cost of its transport.
SPAM is NOT the same as telemarketing because there are currently no laws dictating that I MUST be removed from the calling list of a spammer.
The ACLU can get stuffed on this one. This is a law that needs to be passed. I am REALLY tired of everyone being so naive as to think that a law governing SPAM is some kind of slippery slope for further internet regulation. The government is coming...let's make sure when they regulate that they regulate CORRECTLY...this is an example of CORRECT legislation. The CDA was an example of INCORRECT legislation. Let's make sure our legislator's know and understand the difference, ok?
Spam=U(nsolicited) C(ommercial) E(mail) or UCE.
It is not protected speech as per 1st amendment. 3 words...given also above...Junk Fax Law.
BTW...the law most certainly does make "throw away accounts" illegal. It's called a violation of the terms of service.
no..it's not free, as in unencumbered.
Hey I love the idea of nailing the spammers to the wall...
But it is still going to be hard to enforce... it may be illegal in one state, but not in another, and it's definitely not enforceable in another country.
"What's that? You'd like to send spam? No problem, we'll just get our Canada office to do it for you..."
-
BlackNova Traders
I've found too many sites that I like on geocities
to do that. I just turn off javascript -- 99% of
the time, the only thing I'm missing out on is
annoyance.