North Carolina bans spam

Wansu writes "The North Carolina Senate just ratified a bill outlawing "computer trespass" and transmission of unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail with forged routing information. The law goes into effect December 1, 1999. You can view the bill at the North Carolina General Assembly web site: " What seems much nicer to me would be an institutionalize of spam-even if they just put "Advertisement: Bleah" in the subject line, I'd proc...er...be happy.

Comments

Boy, aren't YOU annoying

[1010011010]

My eyeballs hurt from reading your I-slept-through-english-class-or-maybe-I'm-just-tr ying-to-look-cool message.

Does it feel good to hit the shift key?

So this means...

[Dr. Evil]

That lawyers can seed the internet with their email addresses, take the spammers to court and collect their fees for defending themselves. I like it :-)

Re:Trolling for spam

[Shadowze]

Some spammers use a ton of common nicks and send it to all those nicks in a domain. So the isp you are reffering to probably sets up some dummy accounts with common nicks to catch "the spam wave." Not a bad idea really. Although I have only recieved one or two of these. The rest comes from my address being sold I guess from some things that I have signed up for. I quit my hotmail accounts because it wasn't anything but spam. Couldnt even find my mail in there. But, that's what they were set up for.

North Carolina. So?

[Accipiter]

Great. I agree, this is just what we need to punch another hole in the spammer's wall. But it's North Carolina. JUST North Carolina. Yes, this is a step in the right direction. Yes, it'll help tremendously. But we need this enacted in lots more places. (I know they have no control on what other states do, but this needs to be a kick in the ass for other states to jump on the bus.)

And let's get the penalties a little stiffer. Fines? Bah. They can pay off the fines with the income from their pyramid schemes. We need something like Jail time. BIG prisons. With same-sex inmates. Same sex inmates that have been there a LONG time.

Yeah.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Ban Spam everywhere

[gavinhall]

Posted by The Ignominious Gnome:

By the same argument, why should I have to waste the space in my physical mailbox for junk mail? And I have to carry it in to my apartment. I just throw it all away, but the post office won't let me file a change-of-address form to have all mail to 'resident' returned to sender. (I asked.) I hate spam just as much as anyone else, but I'd rather just be pragmatic about it and ask for truth in labelling. I don't think we can truly get rid of it, but there are ways to make it less intrusive. Server-side mail filters would be nice too - that way I wouldn't have to D/L it all.

out lawing

[Carthies]

If you start out lawing anything on the net you are on thin ice as far as im concerned.
Even the bull e-mail. Deal with the cruddy e-mail and thank your lucky stars we have the freedom we do now.

Re: Good headers and List Mgt

[TonyGreene]

If the headers include accurate and complete (normal) routing info and one header indicated it is an unsolicited bulk message (commercial or otherwise) we'd have all the info we need to handle spam.

The other thing that's needed is a law requiring bulk mailers to

• Actually remove people that request removal from the mailing list
• Not pass the email address to other entities
• Include an email address within the message to handle these functions.

Re:Explicit spam support in SMTP

[TonyGreene]

The only way to stop spam is to get the people who do send it and make it in there best intrest not to do so.

One way to do this is to tell them they face large fines for violating the law. Large enough to offset the potential profit. So patching sendmail to violate the law would become an expensive proposition.

The only sure way to kill spam...

[trims]

Unfortunately, about the only sure-fire way to kill spam (or at least serious reduce the amount sent) is to go to a pay-for-delivery system. That is, your ISP charges you X amount for each email message sent (multiple recipients count as multiple emails).

Of course, this doesn't preclude anyone sending spam, it just transfers a good deal of the cost back to the people it should be on: the spammer.

I fully expect that the Internet will become pay-as-you-go in the relatively near future (say 5 years at the outside). The only major impediment is the infrastructure to support micro-payments and billing isn't in place yet, though there is no technical reason it couldn't be.

And, realistically, why not? The people who use the Internet the most (whether it be bandwidth, email, http, or whatever) should be paying the most. I have no problem with getting a free DSL Line, and then having to pay $10/Gb transfered and $0.02/email. A good chunk of the problem we're in now has to do with the "once you're on, it's all free" and "all-you-can-eat" mentality.

You can't outlaw Spam without seriously infringing upon other liberties (as it's impossible to exactly define what Spam is). Transferring the costs back to the spammer will allow for legitimate direct-email marketing, and elimiate all those spammers getting a free ride now.

Re:The only sure way to kill spam...

[Steve B]

Unfortunately, about the only sure-fire way to kill spam (or at least serious reduce the amount sent) is to go to a pay-for-delivery system.

Experience simply does not support this claim. We've managed to kill junk faxing without imposing extra costs on legitimate faxers by making it a civil offense for which the target has useful recourse.

People are simply not going to accept the notion that they should shoulder extra cost and inconvenience because a few crooks abuse the system -- the proof of this is left as an excersize for any /. thread concerning anti-piracy measures.

I fully expect that the Internet will become pay-as-you-go in the relatively near future (say 5 years at the outside). The only major impediment is the infrastructure to support micro-payments and billing isn't in place yet, though there is no technical reason it couldn't be.

Again, experience points in the opposite direction -- ISPs have tended to go to flat pricing because the market just won't bear metered pricing. Providing a technical capability to do something nobody wants to do anyway is irrelevant.

You can't outlaw Spam without seriously infringing upon other liberties (as it's impossible to exactly define what Spam is).

What part of the phrase "unsolicited bulk e-mail" is unclear? (The fact that "bulk" is a relative term is not a problem -- "noisy" is a relative term, and yet we manage to have laws against blasting a sound truck down residential streets at 2 AM without prohibiting ordinary conversation on the sidewalk).

Transferring the costs back to the spammer will allow for legitimate direct-email marketing

No, it won't, because your system does not transfer all costs (e.g. my incoming bandwidth and storage) to the spammer.
/.

Re:The only sure way to kill spam...

[Anonymous Coward]

Experience from Europe point in the other direction:

More and more European ISP's are moving to free internet access, while the telcos are moving towards flat rates for local calls.

The consumer pressure, as well as increasing competition and lower bandwidth costs means that there is simply no way for anyone to survive in the ISP market with metered pricing anymore.

The market is also moving towards subsidized internet access devices (cheap PC's, specialized web terminals etc.).

All in all, I'd actually expect internet access to become "free" for normal users in a few years. Yes, you'll pay for services, but not for access.

The reason is that there are more and more companies that have reasons to get you to use the net, because they make money on keeping you online.

Many of these companies can earn or save lots of money by subsidizing your net access.

One example is online banking: Norwegian banks for instance expect to have about 35% of the adult population using internet banking by the end of next year. They are pushing it extremely aggressively because it's damn expensive for them to keep lots of offices, and handle transactions manually at a teller. With the advent of Mondex electronic "wallets" (smartcard based), it will be possible for the consumer to handle all banking, including withdrawing or depositing money (with Mondex cards) from home.

For banks etc. this is a dream come true, and every time you visit a branch office, you cause a lot of expenses for them, so they can afford paying fairly much to make you use an online service instead.

Re:Boy, aren't YOU annoying [offtopic]

[umoto]

This reminds me of back in the BBS days when I was modeming to the chat lines. I decided to try applying an ELIZA engine to a chat room. Written in BASIC, whenever I hit Ctrl-E it would look at the last line written by a chat user and write its own semi-intelligent response to it. Emphasis on "semi". The biggest oversight was that it WROTE EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Most of you probably know that older BASIC's didn't support lowercase letters very well. Needless to say, Eliza got flamed for every word she said.

Maybe I should write an Eliza that automatically posts to slashdot. Actually, for all we know some of those AC's may be Eliza or her relatives! Think about it:

Friendly, intelligent user: We should stop bickering about whether open source is right or not and just write code.
Eliza disguised as Anonymous Coward: Open source doesn't make any sense. Windows CE already drives my car for me. I think I'll write a letter to ESR and say Linux stinks.

Remind you of any recent conversations? ;-)

[I apologize for being so offtopic. Moderate me down as needed. :) ]

Re:Neat

[hawk]

>From what I read in the Constitution, it seems
>that it's just the Federal gov't that's
>prohibited from messing with intrastate commerce, >not the other way around.

Nope; exactly backwards. The feds have the authority to regulate interstate commerce, and state interference is presumptively invalid. In fact, interstate trade wars were one of the primary reasons to shift from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution.

However, mere effects are not always enough to invalidate state action; prohibitting fireworks in a state certainly impedes interstate commerce, but is valid. If the law is truly and honestly (not just technically) neutral between in-state and out-of-state actors, it likely (not necessarily) is not an improper restraint on interstate commerce.

"World Series" is correct

[hawk]

The "World Series" does *not* mean "World Championship," though in modern use it tends to b e thought of that way (and realistically, even the best teams from other countries would have no chance at winning).

However, "World" is the name of the newspaper that concocted the series in the first place, pitting the champions of each of the two major leagues against each other in order to sell more newspapers. It could just have easily been the "Chronicle Series" or whatever. The World has long since vanished, but the name remains.

And as for the WWF: take it, please :)

Re:The Internet is international, not American

[mpe]

It is worth pointing out here that although the Internet was
originally created in America, the Internet is now international.
Do not make the mistake of assuming "United States ==
Whole World".

Already happening there are spams mentioning proposed
US legislation. Including those which originate from no
where near the US. (As well as those which refer to calling
"freephone" numbers which start +1 800 or +1 888.)

We already have such laws with respect to such
International items as international shipping, international
air traffic and so forth.

Would we end up with a situation,as with the ITU, where
the US prefers to do it's own thing?

not necessarily

[hawk]

As far as I can tell, the law does not *discriminate* against in-state and out-of-state spammers, either by design or impact. That an act crosses state lines does not necessarily mean that the state may not regulate the impact within its own borders--a cross-border shooting is the easiest example. Shipping of articles banned in the state is an act of interstate commerce, yet the receiving state may still ban it.

I think that the federal government could certainly pre-empt state spam laws, but until it does, states will remain free to pass laws governing spam delivered within their borders.

hawk, esq.

Re:Trolling for spam

[ggeens]

What they actually do sometimes, is to submit these dummy addresses to removal services.

The most important thing to learn from this kind of experiments is that these opt-out lists are actually a source of addresses to be spammed.

There are other ways to have an address "harvested" by a spammer: just put it somewhere on a web page.

The difference is:

[ch-chuck]

one you go out to get on your own freewill with some freedom of choice and the other is forced into your mailbox against your wishes.

I think some of what happens is pro spammers 'sell' advertising services to unsuspecting, gullible small business folks (your typical M$ customer) who have heard about this nifty Internet stuff but don't really understand it - all Mr. or Mrs. small businessperson knows is some Internet company sold them "get your message to 25 million eyeballs for only $250!!" and they bought it, just like they buy ad space in a local paper or time on a radio station. The only ones who profit are the screwball spamming scumbags.

Chuck

Re:The difference is:

[Legerdemain]

I can understand some of the differences now. Thank you.

I am anti-spam without a doubt.

And usually I feel that library filtering is a good thing. It just seems to complicated to try and do such a task considering how much fine art has nipples.

My message obviously looked like trolling/flame-bait, but I still think it's difficult to try and hold the stance (library_porn==good && spam==bad).

Think of the children! :)

Besides don't you think that porn at libraries cost taxpayers? (electricity, net-connection, employees, building, water/restrooms, maintenance)

Everything has a cost. Spam and library_porn.

Re:The Internet is international, not American [OT

[AdamJ]

WWF- Wrestlers from all over the world flex and grunt in the WWF. They come here because only in the US is this art form appreciated :)

Damn. Someone better tell the 60,000 Japanese people that attend single events that they aren't supposed to be there.. ;-) (Same sport, but vastly different styles, I'll give you that. Still, you see more North American wrestlers going to Japan than Japanese to NA..)

Adam J
TSS Productions
Posting Quality Off-Topic to Slashdot for the first time!

Only their smtp server

[boarder]

I can tell you from experience that this doesn't work and is a bad idea. GTE has something similar to this implemented at the dialup here in Houston. I go to school at a University and use their email services for everything I do. Unfortunately, when I signed on to GTE I was FORCED to use their SMTP AND POP servers to send mail. This ALSO meant I had to use that email address to send stuff. An ISP is just that, an _Internet_ service provider, not a _Proprietary_ service provider.

your years behind

[hawk]

In the late 80's or early 90's, this was done on usenet, and people actually engaged in conversations with it. (And how does thinking that I'm a progam make you feel?).

And earlier than that, when usenet was primarily passed by modem over toll phone calls, it was widely suspected that rlr@att[mumble] was an AI program designed to boost phone traffic (still carried predominantly by AT&T) by getting everyone mad at him.

net.flame was a single (and usually reasonably civilized an literate) newsgroup, but net.flame.rlr was proposed (the third block was rare at the time, there were only 40 or so net.* groups altogether). And I proposed an ancestor of the kill file, literally a hardcoded program that would grep for his name in the newsspool (a single directory at the time) and mark any messages from him as read in the appropriate groups in .newsrc. I never got around to writing it, but I got plenty of requests for it.

Hows that for "good old days" reminiscing? One troll on the entire usenet :)

Re:What can be, and is being done. ; )

[Anonymous Coward]

If you begin blocking dial up IP's Many Legitimate Mail Servers would be blocked. Why should a small company using a dial up port or even an ISDN dial up port not be allowed to run a mail server and send mail? Also, RFC standards do allow receiving mail form dial up ports. So by blocking dial up ports you make your mail server very non standard. This is a No No when you sell service to the public. I hate spam just as much as the next guy buy why punish the small business who cannot afford a dedicated connection?

Re:Neat

[Fizgig]

Are you sure about that? In Article I it says something to the effect (looked it up yesterday; too lazy now) "Congress has the power to regulate commerce with different nations, among the several states, and with the various Indian nations." The 10th Amendment says if it doesn't say the federal gov't can do it, the states get that power (thus intrastate is their domain only). Where does it say the states can't regulate interstate commerce?

Re:Ban Spam everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, "your" mailbox normally actually belongs to the Postal Service, and the senders paid them for delivering it.

Re:Explicit spam support in SMTP

[sjames]

Since spammers are always claiming that people WANT to recieve the messages, require them to abort on error. That way, nobody has to do anything, and the statistics will speak for themselves.

Could this apply to the manufacturer? Bye M$ :)

[r2ravens]

M$ could be in trouble. If it's illegal to "cause" this to happen, wouldn't it be illegal to manufacture the product that "causes" this. M$ themselves would be guilty, as would the OEM's, as would any user who purchased this product and installed it themselves, yes?

Would this make NC a M$-free zone?
Worse things could happen, eh? :)

BTW, I agree that this portion of the statute is even more important and may have more impact than the SPAM provisions.

Russ

Re:Could this apply to the manufacturer? Bye M$ :)

[Accipiter]

That being true, North Carolina would have to ban every piece of software capable of generating text, as well as sendmail, pine, outlook, etc. All those programs contribute to the yellow-brick-road of spam.

If pico is outlawed, only outlaws will have pico.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Could this apply to the manufacturer? Bye M$ :)

[dillon_rinker]

I believe the post you replied to had nothing to do with spam, rather the fact that MS software could cause data loss, shut down a computer, etc.
---
hukt on fonix werkt phor me!

Re:Could this apply to the manufacturer? Bye M$ :)

[dillon_rinker]

I'm sure MS's indemnification or "hold harmless" clause in the EULA would protect them from lawsuits over problems caused by crashes.

Make an unauthorized copy [of] any printed or electronic form of computer data
However, their recent collection of registry entries (or whatever it was) would clearly violate this clause, since people did not agree to it. They will get around that pretty quickly. Look for EULA's to begin including disclaimers saying that MS can extract configuration information for troubleshooting purposes (or some other bogus reason) or else you can't use the software.

Re:Not good enough

[Accipiter]

Any Spam shit I get from AOL, I just forward the entire message to abuse@aol.com. Yeah, I know they're temporary accounts, but if the abuse addy gets annoyed with the messages I send them, they might take action.

Doubtful, but a guy can dream, right?

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[Legerdemain]

It tells us alot about ourselves.

Ban spam.

Dont ban porn from libraries.


I thought freedom of speech was important no matter what.

Re:Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[discHead]

Legerdemain, do you mind if I come over to your house and exercise my right to free speech in your living room with a can of spray paint? :-)

Re:Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[Accipiter]

Hold on there, skippy. There's a big difference between having the right to say what you want, and spending everyone else's money to shove unwanted advertising down unwilling recipients' throats.

Freedom of speech means you can voice your opinion, not waste other people's resources to pretend teach people how to "make $5000 a week working from home!"

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[Kithran]

Freedom of speach should not come into the arguement for banning spam at all. The biggest problem with spam is not a matter of content (I don't care if a piece of unsolicited email I recieve is trying to sell me something or just telling me the bombing of serbia is wrong). Instead the problem is that the majority of the costs relating to spam are bourne by the recipient rather than the sender.

I'm sure you'd have a problem if every other day someone knocked on your door and tried to sell you something and then charged you 5 cents for the priveledge whether you had any interest in the product or not. Or if you want a different analogy suppose you were charged 5 cents every time a representative of an election candidate knocked on your door to ask for your vote - especially if it was for an election you couldn't even vote in?

Kithran

Re:Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[Steve B]

It tells us alot about ourselves.

Well, yes, the fact that we /.ers want to ban theft and do not want to ban free speech tells us that we are smarter and more moral than 95% of the political class.
/.

Re:Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you had to PAY for all the spam e-mail you get, you might be a little annoyed with it, too. There are still a lot of people out there that pay for their internet access per hour (or overseas, per minute). I don't have to pay-per-hour anymore, but I used to, so I know how annoying it is when other people start using up your own money for their advertising.
Because of spam, I'm pretty much considering abandoning one of my e-mail addresses, since I get 98% spam plus the one or two mailing lists I've subscribed to.

Re:Funny what we like to ban, and what we dont.

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if you pay by the hour or via flat rate, you still have to pay.

Hemos's naive logic

[discHead]

"What seems much nicer to me would be to make all of the burglars wear big orange hats, so I can tell them to go away when they knock on my door."

Re:Hemos's naive logic

[Accipiter]

It would make aiming the gun easier, no?

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

compilance

[Barbarian]

A lot of them also claim compliance with a House of Representatives bill, which died on the floor last year anyways.

Re:.00001% of spam is good

[Accipiter]

Guess what? You already spent 5 times the value of that coupon this year paying for the resources wasted by the other 99.99999%.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Why is SPAM so bad ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well i think the main Problem is, that the only SPAM i get is this stupid "Make money fast" etc crap. Now if i were to get some sensible stuff,
Like ads that Interest me, it still would not be good, but a little better. And the other Problem
is that 99,9 % of the spammers dont want to do business with clever people anyway. Or why do they fake the from header .. ?
Dont get me wrong, i am not a friend of spam because my domain was included in a from header once .. i only got about 3000 emails .. in total about 1 Gb .. thank goodness i have quotas ;)
Privatly i get about 1 email a week, and it goes strait to the abuse dept. with a nice friendly email.

PS : i dont have a ./ account , but email me at gavin@space4u.com

Re:Why is SPAM so bad ?

[Helge Hafting]

Well i think the main Problem is, that the only SPAM i get is this stupid "Make money fast" etc crap. Now if i were to get some sensible stuff, Like ads that Interest me, it still would not be good, but a little better.

If you want "ads that interest you" then use a search engine like altavista and find 1000 interesting ads. It is that simple. No email needed for that!

Re:Not good enough - wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you like to get and pay for 1000 email spam messages *per day*? The economics of it are such is that the only reason you're not currently drowning in spam is because it hasn't been legitimized and because rabid anti-spammers make life difficult for them.

Your 'solution' is unfortunately common amongst people who don't fully understand the problem. I'd suggest you visit sites like www.cauce.org and find out a little more about it.

Yeah: Now Mr Scumbag becomes respected.

[Pingo]

The sad thing is that when Mr Scumbag obeys this new law, he becomes a lawabiding citizen and can also demand the protection of the society.

This new law is a tragedy since Mr Scumbag moves from being a social lowlife to into a 'respected' businessman.

Since he now is legal and a 'respected' businessman even banks might lend him money to expand his 'business'.


//Pingo

Re:Yeah: Now Mr Scumbag becomes respected.

[Steve B]

The sad thing is that when Mr Scumbag obeys this new law

Obviously, the law needs to be written so that the only way to obey it is to [drum roll .wav] not send any spam.

In that case, who cares how much or how little respect the (former) spammer gets?
/.

What can be, and is being done. ; )

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the things that I have seen done that
stop spam. I'll take mindspring as an example:

Set up a process that null routes traffic from
known spam sending networks.

Set up a database of IP's that belong to dialup
accounts on other ISP's and not allow mail
originating from them.

These two things kill so much spam it's not even
funny. From what I understand, they are adding
IP pools to their filter every day. So when Joe
piece of shit spammer signs up his latest AOL
account with a fake credit card and starts sending
spam, non of it makes it to the people that have
mindspring dialup accounts. And when piece of
shit spamming company sends mail out from their
spamserver, or relay it off of their favorite
asian open relay, it might make it through the
first time, but that's it. Only if the mail is
coming from an approved smtp server will the mail
get delivered. Mindspring also has what most
people consider to be the most clueful abuse
department there is. These guys are famous for
stopping most incoming spam while it's happening.

I also respect these guys because they practice
what they implement. mindspring dialup users can't
send email out using any smpt server except
mindsprings. They have IP filters set up for port
25 that make this possible. If all ISP's out there
did these things, spam would be a moot point. For
now, you can send mail to your ISP suggesting that
they do these things, or get yourself a mindspring
account and quit worrying about it.

Re:So what about usenet

[Alan Shutko]

I'd be stopped cold by your address-munge. Not because I can't fix it, but because I don't care to. If you want to make it more difficult for me to respond to you, I don't need to bother.

Mindspring Sucks

[slashpot]

I think your nuts. I have an account on mindspring and another on a small local ISP. I have used both accounts about equally as much.
The mindspring email box is constantly full of spam crap, most of it from mindspring dial-ups.
The other smaller isp's email box rarely gets spammed (1 or 2 a week) and it is almost always coming from a mindspring camel(blah blah) server. I don't know why, it just is.
Not only that, I think the whole mindspring mail system is screwy. I have gotten quite a few emails addressed to other mindspring members (personal stuffs....not spams) delivered to my box.

Sorry, but you have to have intent also

[ethereal]

A more complete quote:

It shall be unlawful for any person to use a computer or computer network without authority and with the intent to do any of the following: [snip]

Thus you would have to prove that Microsoft intended to cause the computer trespass, and that they used the network without authority. Not really applicable to the normal way Windows is installed.

On the plus side, Slashdotting a site is still legal, because there is no intent to bring down the site. Also, IANAL but I would expect that running a web server that is openly available on the 'net would mean that you grant the authority to the public to use that machine and network for the purposes of download.

Spammers are thieves

[Anonymous Coward]

Spammers steal from us. They make us pay for their advertising. What similarity do you see in the two situations?

Re:Not more unenforcable legislation

[Bowms]

Did you actually _read_ any portion of the bill? Unless your anonymized mail is also unsolicited commercial email, you don't have a thing to worry about.

Please, please, read before you write.

Bowms

Re:Bravo!

[VChris]

Actually I was hoping that North Carolina would make it a capital offense. They have a choice - Leathal Injection (BOOOO!) or the Gas Chamber (Better of the two). Publisize and televise please!

Re:The Internet is international, not American [OT

[incubus]

That's cuz they're afraid of the hulkster! :-)

About time

[ShadowDragon]

Well, I handle abuse at an ISP in North Carolina, and have been following this closely.. all I can say is it's about time this bill got passed.. less than $1500 damage is a misdemeanor, more than$1500 damage is a felony.. I can't wait to get out the old calculator and start adding this up.. Can I use the SysAdmin's price list from alt.sysadmin.recovery? :)

On this note... My wife was mail bombed from a UUnet account two weeks ago.. contacted uunet, nothing really happened.. It happened again Saturday morning.. she was connected at the time.. I called UUnet, gave them the IP.. they knocked the user offline and shut off his account, and asked if I wanted to press charges.. too bad the bill didn't pass earlier..

Ummmmmmmmmm, no?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmmmmmm, you don't really show how this doesn't
work. I guess as and example I could boldly state RAISIN TOAST IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD!!! then defend this statement by talking about pez.

Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason that a small business should
want to run their own smtp server when their ISP
provides one for them. You might have had a point
there if you had known what you were talking about.

No, apparently you suck

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like you just have to enable the spam
filter thing they call the spaminizer or whatever.
Call tech support. I did a few months ago and I think I've gotten 15 piece of spam since, and never two from the same place. As far as the mail
getting sent to you meant for other people, that's
call forging headers. Spammers do that. I guess that should stop or decrease after you enable the
spam blocking stuff on your account.

So what about usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if, as a user wishing to avoid SPAM, I append _nospam to my email address in a usenet posting. Will this also be illegal? I'm not concealing routing information, except for the From: address, and any user can reasonably decipher the real address (and I assume that SPAMBOTS will soon learn to recognize doubtful addresses).

Re:So what about usenet

[BWindle]

Only if you consider usenet posting as a bulk, commerical email.

Re:So what about usenet

[mircea]

If you read it, it says:

"Falsely identify with the intent to deceive or defraud the recipient or forge commercial electronic mail transmission information or other routing information in any manner in connection with the transmission of unsolicited bulk commercial electronic mail through or into the computer network of an electronic mail service provider or its subscribers.

It doesn't look like using a spamproof address is illegal - since you're not using it to "deceive or defraud", are you?

Re:So what about usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

When are we going to be able to outlaw all
the stupid advertising that comes in the normal
mail? It's just as unsolicited, a lot more
wasteful since it's on paper, and yet nobody
does anything about that ...

Re:So what about usenet

[gavinhall]

Posted by 2B||!2B:

Amen!

Re:So what about usenet

[BattyMan]

I find it shocking to see how many PEOPLE
(particularly from AOHell) are stopped *cold*
by "mikie.nospam@penguinpowered.com"! I explain
in my sig. what I'm up to, and yet retired IBM
programmers cannot reply to me, never mind my mom.

And I jussst can't say about the 'bots. You'd
think their programmers would be wise to this by
*now*, but they aren't.

Re:So what about usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I wonder about that (SpamBots not automatically removing at least the obvious spam baits like nospam, spam, dot etc...)

Is this because:
A. Spammers don't actually know how their spam grabbers work, and so they have to wait for their programmers to fix it

B. Spammers are smart enough to realize that if someone goes to the trouble of spam proofing are not stupid enough to buy their wares.

C. Spammers are smart enough to realize that people who go to the trouble of spam proofing will also go to the trouble of reporting their emails and/or tracking their forged accounts and getting their email axed.

D. Spammers are getting enough AOLusers, et al., to not bother with getting the minority who spam proof.

Re:So what about usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

would you believe...the U.S. Postal Service actually gives *discounts* to businesses who send spam snail mail? no wonder it's so popular.

Re:So what about usenet

[jcr]

There's nothing in this bill that affects you if you're not posting an ad.

-jcr

Not good enough

[crow]

I get tons of spam that has non-forged routing and email information, but the problem is that it comes from temporary accounts from AOL, or references free email accounts at YaHoo or Hotmail.

What we need at a minimum is something that will ban sending unsolicited commercial e-mail from accounts without the permission of the company that issues those accounts.

Personally, I would ban all unsolicited commercial email.

Re:Not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

*unsolicited commercial email*
commercial = I want to sell you something, not mail that comes from *.com

Re:Not good enough

[Steve B]

The correct solution is simply to introduce legislation that requires e-mail advertisements to be accompanied by a return-address at which mail is read and handled by a real person. That's all we need.

That's too easy to evade -- spammers can just set up a non-functional address and, if legal action is taken against them, whine that they really truly did try to follow th law, but anti-commerce computer hippie hackers (I swear, I am taking this purple prose verbatim from spammer self-justifications) screwed up their mail.
/.

Re:Not good enough

[Wonko42]

Personally, I would ban all unsolicited commercial email.

Let's think about this for a minute...if all unsolicited e-mail were banned, where would that leave us? We would only be able to e-mail someone after we had, say, called them up on the phone and asked for their permission. Or spoke to them in person and informed them that we would be sending them an e-mail. Now tell me again how this would make things better?

The correct solution is simply to introduce legislation that requires e-mail advertisements to be accompanied by a return-address at which mail is read and handled by a real person. That's all we need.

--
Wonko the Sane

Re:Not good enough

[Wonko42]

I should clarify that I'm speaking from the point of view of someone who works for a large corporation, and when I send e-mail to anyone from my company address, it could be considered commercial.

--
Wonko the Sane

Re:Not good enough

[dillon_rinker]

The guidelines I've seen for "unsolicited" implies that you have no former relationship (business or personal)with the sender or that the sender has expressly informed you that they don't want email from you. So if you buy something from me, I can email you about current specials; if you say you don't want email from me anymore, I can't ever send you email again.

Trolling for spam

[crow]

I've heard that some ISPs set up fake accounts and troll for spam, allowing them to kill all the duplicates that are sent to real accounts. Do they just post dummy messages with these accounts, or what?

Now what if they did that with the email addresses of all state and federal legislators? :)

Re:Trolling for spam

[mircea]

"Now what if they did that with the email addresses of all state and federal legislators? :)"

Belive me or not, I've seen someone on the usenet doing just this - using addresses from ftc.gov :)

Re:Trolling for spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Most spam software ignores .gov and .mil
domains. A lot of them ignore .edu, but
obviously not all of them.

Banning anonymity

[crow]

Watch out for legislation like this. Essentially, all it is doing is banning anonymity. This isn't about saying what you can or can't send, only that you can't do it with fake routing info.

It is probably aimed more at stopping people from sending spam that appears to be from slashdot.org or such, but I don't think they thought through all the privacy issues that it is treading very close to.

Re:Banning anonymity

[code4444]

There is a great difference between anonymity and forging. They want to ban forging routing information. A message labeled 'this message has gone through the xyz.org anomynizer' is not forged - it's perfectly correct and true. xyz.com has taken over the responsibility for the content, if there is a problem with the message they will deal with it. If necessary, they will 'forward' the responsibility to the true originator.

Forging tries to put the responsibility with someone else who hasn't got anything to do with it, or tries to avoid any responsibility. This is bad. Very bad. Free speech without any responsibility for what is said is meaningless and usually just serves crooks, hate mongers and such. The whole idea behind free speech is to be able to say what you want without having to hide who you are.

As an example, I remember the Internet 'before AOL'. Before AOL, most people on the net could be traced to real persons because most access was through companies, schools etc. If you had a problem with someone, you complained to their admin and (s)he either axed the account or told you to fuck off. Chronic abusers generally lost their account quickly and got pissed on in real life too.

Sure there were problems. Occasionally.

Then AOL came. They brough hoared of clueless idiots, so bad that having .aol in your address meant you weren't taken serious by anyone. And behold; AOL didn't care about anything but growing bigger! They snail-mail spammed anyone owning a computer with at least two AOL floppies a month. And big they were. They didn't care about anything but growing. AOL users changed their screen names more often than their underware. There was no point in having their account janked because they already had a new one lined up in advance. AOL never gave out real identifying info of any kind of their users. They were truly anonymous.

Before AOL, you could route you mail through servers that removed all identifying information, and there were used e.g. by people posting in the alt.sex hierarchy. But these servers took responsibility for what they did and would come down like a ton of bricks on anyone trying to abuse them.

Many attempts were made decency freaks to shut down those 'lewd' newsgroups. With extreemly little success. Until AOL came around, and gave people true anonimity with no responsibility.

Suddenly there were pest all over the place, picking fights, trolling, spamming, or just making a nuisance of themselves. Mostly loosers that got a power kick out of harrassing other people who couldn't do anything back.

All the newsgroups no one had been able to shut down died within a year of spamming and drive by flames.

Re:Banning anonymity

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehh.. Hello?!? Have you been reading anything on Usenet lately? There are more alt.sex newsgroups than ever, and there's lots of traffic in them (I know, I read several of them ;)

Re:Banning anonymity

[Sinner]

If you think forged headers give you anonymity, you deserve the Feds that are gonna be bashing down your door at 3am. Seriously, do yourself a favour, and search for "mixmaster".

Will it do any good?

[hanway]

A lot of the spam I already get contains some meaningless language about "not being intended for residents of Washington State." The problem is that the spammers don't know or care whether I receive my email in WA or anywhere else; that's just a feeble attempt to cover themselves. Are they just going to tack on "and North Carolina" and leave everything the same?

Re:Will it do any good?

[sterno]

A related problem is how do you apply the law if a resident of North Carolina receives said illegal mail from a sender in California to their e-mail provider in New York? Who's jurisdiction is it under?

I wonder when all of these yahoos are going to get it through their skulls that laws regulating the Internet are only affected if they can be enforced at a global level. Otherwise the laws can simply be worked around by going to another state or country.

---

Ban Spam everywhere

[smartin]

It's not ok to just put a spam header on the message. Why should I have to dedicate bandwidth, disk space and processing power to messages that I absolutely do not want. Spammers are lowlife and abuser's of the the Net's share the wealth attitude towards passing packets and messages. They should be shot, pissed on and punished.

Re:Ban Spam everywhere

[Brian Knotts]

They should be shot, pissed on and punished.

And preferably in that order... B)

--

Re:Ban Spam everywhere

[hadron]

Physical junk mail is not such a problem, because the companies that send it actually have to pay money to get it delivered.

If we weren't cracking down on e-mail spam like we have been doing for the past few years, the internet would currently be unusable due to fools abusing the mail system.

Re:Explicit spam support in SMTP

[incubus]

And *requiring* that all mail transfer programs have that as a feature? I think not.. more government regulation is not a good thing. Governments govern best when they govern least.

Explicit spam support in SMTP

[Bloater]

Do you think, that if SMTP had support for a SPAM mode, governments would pass laws allowing sending and propagating of unsolicited commericial email using that feature, but banning not using that feature.

So anyone sending SPAM must say so early in the STMP transaction (ie, HELO blah\n SPAM\n), so the reciever can say bye-bye if it doesn't want it, and accept it if it does. This allows for choice, which is good.

Re:Explicit spam support in SMTP

[Anonymous Coward]

The wouldn't have to require it. Requiring the spammers to attempt to use the feature, would be enough. Whether you require them to abort the mail attempt if the server responds with an error, or you let them continue, it would still work with all existing MTA's if implemented properly.

The easiest way to get it accepted, would probably be to require the spammers to send a special command, before proceeding.

MTA's that doesn't support it will just issue an error, and let them continue. MTA's supporting the feature would have the option of issuing an OK message or closing the connection.

Re:Explicit spam support in SMTP

[Anonymous Coward]

Introducing a feature like this, and passing a law that force them to pay stiff fines or serving time in prison WOULD make it in their best interest to honour it. The point isn't to stop people from getting around it by technical means, because obviously that would be easy.

You'd have to make it a criminal offence, and optionally also let the ISP's sue for theft of service, and make a provision in the law that would make it so profitable to sue a spammer and win that ISP's would go after each and every spammer with an army of lawyers...

Re:Explicit spam support in SMTP

[jmauro]

Spammers already try to get around it so defining something like that wouldn't be effective, since they would just set up there systems not to send those headers which identify the letter as spam. Sendmail is open source so someone resourceful enough would just edit the source to disable this feature. The only way to stop spam is to get the people who do send it and make it in there best intrest not to do so.

I don't see how this will help..

[incubus]

I think sending commercial email (unsolicited or not) would likely be a federally regulated thing, unless the email message never happens to cross state lines. (fairly unlikely for most of this stuff)
I don't know what they plan to prove with this.

north carolina

[mcc]

and what if the e-mail in question originated from outside of North Carolina? or from New Zealand?

Probably all this will do is convince bulk e-mailers to never, ever use real e-mail adresses, since they would be taking the risk that maybe one of the e-mail adresses they're sending to is inside of North Carolina.

Or maybe i'm misreading this.. "in contravention of the authority granted by or in violation of the policies set by the electronic mail service provider".. does this make it illegal to send bulk e-mail to an ISP that doesn't want bulk e-mail? or make it illegal to send bulk e-mail _FROM_ an ISP that doesn't want to send bulk e-mail?

i'm confused.. i don't speak lawyer.

Re:north carolina

[Baz Quux]

IANAL.

"and what if the e-mail in question originated from outside of North Carolina? or from New Zealand?"

Indeed. The bill addresses spam "sent into or within this State," so spam from New Zealand to here is illegal, but not so easy to pursue.

Personally, as a NC resident and a spam-hater, I love the sound of this bill -- it goes great in a .sig. But how enforceable it really is remains to be seen. I've received exactly two spams ever that I know came from NC. Everything else seems to be from UUNet accounts (mostly Palm Beach?). Even if a spammer manages to cause the requisite $2500 to be brought up on felony charges, it seems doubtful that they would ever actually be extradited from another state, much less from another country. Although it is a criminal offense, which a district attorney can pursue (meaning I don't have to get a lawyer and file my own suit), I don't know who is going to spend the time and resources to go after what amount to petty criminals.

".. does this make it illegal to send bulk e-mail to an ISP that doesn't want bulk e-mail? or make it illegal to send bulk e-mail _FROM_ an ISP that doesn't want to send bulk e-mail?"

I read that as being FROM an ISP that doesn't want spam sent. But even spamhauses have upstream providers - seems to me an ISP is an ISP is an ISP...

Unconstitutional Law

[crow]

Interesting point. This seems to be pretty clearly a case of interstate commerce, which is solely in the relm of the federal government, thanks to that much-abused clause in the Constitution.

Of course, the attitude of most lawmakers is to pass whatever laws seem politically useful at the time and let the courts think through the constitutional issues.

Re:Unconstitutional Law

[Anonymous Coward]

It might most often be a case of interstate commerce, but not always. So the law may have limited impact, but it will have some impact.

Snail-mail spam: different

[crow]

Snail mail spam is a pain, but it is very different. First, the recipient of such spam doesn't pay for the priviledge of receiving it. Second, the Postal Service doesn't object to carrying it. Third, snail mail spammers have to pay a fee for each item they send, which acts as an incentive for them to target their mailings to only those most likely to be interested.

That in mind, I would consider the following reforms to be reasonable for bulk snail mail:

• Rates for bulk mail should be such that commercial mail subsidizes other mail.
  
• All bulk mailings must provide a phone number to call to be removed from the list (and it must be on the outside of the mailing).
  

Re:Snail-mail spam: different

[arcade]

Phone number? I don't want to call to the US to be removed from a spammers list. If I want to be spammed, I want the choice to ENTER the lists of the spammers. I don't want to be the one who have to take action, to be removed.

Re:Snail-mail spam: different

[BattyMan]

Well, the first of these is the truth of the situation already, and that's why the USPS has no objection to carrying unwanted advertising: they make their money on it.

The second... you won't get any help from your mailman on this, as the thing that makes it easy, convenient, and *profitable* is that he gets six bundles of B.S.and gives one of each out to everybody, no thought, little effort. It's nowhere near as easy to have to worry about who _doesn't_ get this and who _does_ want that....

I'll admit it's morally indefensible - all that pretty 4-color, just going straight into the landfill, totally unread!

PLEASE, RECYCLE!

Re:Snail-mail spam: different

[Chris Hiner]

You can ask at the Post Office, and get yourself opted out of most of the bulk rate ads, the stuff that doesn't directly have your address printed on it. My mom used to work there, and she showed me the case they sort mail into, and there was one color thing they'd stick into the box when you were on a vacation stop, and a different color one if you didn't want the junk mail.

Fear of Spam

[Vagary]

Do you think it's significant that only 3 out of the 51 comments under this story (at the time this is posted) have real, ungarbled email addresses?
Jared Warren

It appears to be working fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

MindSpring has something like, 2 million customers
and is growing really fast it seems.

This sounds like a desparate spammer plea

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason I can think of for a small business to want to setup an smtp server on a dialup account is so they can send bulk unsolicited email. If their ISP gives them an SMTP server to use, they should use it.

And they do very little marketing.

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the stunning things about mindspring is that they do almost no advertising at all. Almost all their customer are from word of mouth. If I remember, they have the lowest customer turnover in the industry.

Lawyer: it's like regular advertising

[hawk]

I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. See a lawyer in your own state if you need some.

Advertising by flyer or in a newspaper is a useful comparison here. The law does not consider the ad an offer to sell, but an invitation for buyers to make offers at that price (it would do serious violence to contract law and markets otherwise). Similarly, the posting of a web site is an offer to show information, and repeating this offer to the world will generally be no more odious than telling the world about the wonderful price on grapefruit in this morning's paper.

hawk, esq.

Re:Please Don't Advocate Legalising Spam

[leto]

I think spam will kill itself sooner. One should
only need to think as a spammer. Imagine I have
a porn site. At the time where 40% of my potential
clients have DSL or a fast cable modem, I'm going
to send out 15MB sample video clips of porn. Users
still using isdn or 33k/57k will roar. Spam wil
kill itself under its own weight, and rather sooner then later I think.

Leto

No. No 'institutionalizing'.

[ddm]

I don't care what it says in the subject. It's taking up my ISP's resources to get it to me in the first place. It takes my download time to get it to my machine. No spam. Nonononono. If I want to be on your mailing list, I'll ask. Until they come up with a way that the advertiser pays the entire cost of the ad, I won't accept any plan to let it slide by.

Neat

[Fizgig]

Well, it certainly isn't going to hurt me. From what I understand of reading the bill, it applies to unsolicited bulk commercial email (these terms are defined in the bill; check before complaining) and means that I can sue a spammer and they'll have to pay my court costs as well as any damages (which are likely to be negligable anyway). That's probably a bit more effective than emailing their ISP. And though this certainly is interstate commerce, is there anything prohibiting states from doing this? From what I read in the Constitution, it seems that it's just the Federal gov't that's prohibited from messing with intrastate commerce, not the other way around.

Hmm, maybe I should remove the "remove" from my address.

Not more unenforcable legislation

[Jacobian]

Unenforcible legislation, means SELECTIVELY enforced legislation. So when they go knocking down your door and confiscate your computer for using an annonymizer, don't blame me.

.00001% of spam is good

[agtofchaos]

I got spammed by zones.com a few times and the last message was a survey where I got a $20 off coupon.

This Looks Strong Enough To Work

[mudpup]

I Hope More States Follow This Bill It Looks Like It Could Be Strong Enough To Work. If You Get Caught By North Carolina Sending Spam (Read Their Definition)
You Will Windup Paying The Isp And End Receivers $10.00 A Copy Or $25000 A Day If The Network Admin Can Show You Damaged The System Or Caused Profit Lose Of More Than $2500 You Could Be Convicted Of A Felony (Jail Time)

If They Can Enforce This Law It Looks To Have Some Real Teeth.
I Hope More States Follow This Bill It Looks Like It Could Be Strong Enough To Work. If You Get Caught By North Carolina Sending Spam (Read Their Definition)
You Will Windup Paying The Isp And End Receivers $10.00 A Copy Or $25000 A Day If The Network Admin Can Show You Damaged The System Or Caused Profit Lose Of More Than $2500 You Could Be Convicted Of A Felony (Jail Time)

If They Can Enforce This Law It Looks To Have Some Real Teeth.


Dennis

Re:This Looks Strong Enough To Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, ease up on the SHIFT key, huh?

Re:This Looks Strong Enough To Work

[Baz Quux]

Don't worry, I'm sure we'll outlaw improper capitalization too, eventually -- revoke your driver license or something. =)

It makes DoS, piracy, and maybe Win98 illegal too

[Baz Quux]

Look at the bill. Scroll down. Scroll down some more. Stop.

14-458. Computer trespass; penalty.

Read that bit.

"It shall be unlawful for any person to use a computer or computer network without authority [to] temporarily or permanently remove, halt, or otherwise disable any computer data, computer programs, or computer software from a computer or computer network... cause a computer to malfunction, regardless of how long the malfunction persists... alter or erase any computer data... Make an unauthorized copy [of] any printed or electronic form of computer data"

I think this section is far more powerful than the anti-spam bit. Not only can that stuff get you fired, kicked out of school, or your ISP account cancelled, but as of 12/1/99 you can get prosecuted and fined, too. Were it not for the "without authority" clause, installing Windows 98 over a LAN could be classified as criminal. Even so...

an evil thought

[Anonymous Coward]

how about setting up mail redirectors with .com addresses to redirect mail to senators/congressmen/etc ...

can you say iname.com, poboxes.com?

*evil grin*

Re:The Internet is international, not American

[kabloie]

Inasfar as new international laws are needed, who is going to enforce them? Nobody goes around blatantly breaking air traffic laws. Your average 15-year old miscreant does not have the resources. It takes quite a bit of organization to break international shipping laws. Organized crime perhaps. The point is, don't make laws that every other dope with a modem is itching to test.

Local laws like the one discussed here, though on the surface absurd, state that residents of North Carolina cannot spam the rest of the world. If you want to spam, move to Georgia. The fact that they might even enforce the law is rather altruistic of them, or could be interpreted as such. They are doing their small unappreciated part to make 'the world, yours and mine, a better place'.

WWF- Wrestlers from all over the world flex and grunt in the WWF. They come here because only in the US is this art form appreciated :)

We have the best players from around the world playing basketball and hockey here cause we pay. A lot of (evil corporate) money is at stake. These leagues are extremely competitive. We certainly have the world's best football-american and baseball teams cause nobody else understands the rules. Winners of the Stupor Bowl and World Series are the best in the world. Yes I know they play baseball in Japan. Damn fine Little League team :P

-kabloie

Bravo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish more governments followed North Carolina's lead!

Now if we can only get Texas to follow their lead (and knowing Texas they'll probably make it a capital offense :-).

Re:Please Don't Advocate Legalising Spam

[dillon_rinker]

Most spammers never go out of business. Individual corporations may go under, but the principals merely set up shop under a different name. Individual spammers merely get another ISP. If no one will accept their name or credit card number, they merely get another credit card and user someone else's (like their wife, or kids) to set up an account. Apart from that you're dead on.

This is an informed common-sense guess rather than a statement of known fact, but I'll hold to it unless you can point me to contrary evidence

Re:Please Don't Advocate Legalising Spam

[Flambergius]

> The only way we can stamp out spam is by a combination of social,
> legal, technical and economic pressure. But if we allow the legalisation
> of spamming for the sake of some short term convenience (for the elite
> who can create mail filters),then that destroys the legal argument and
> weakens the effectiveness of the other three.

Excellent! I totally agree. I think this comment should have gotten higher score then 2. Most of the time I have time to read only the ones that scored 3 or more, so I could have easily missed this, even though it makes a very good point.

Apologizes for not having any input on the subject.

--Flam

The Internet is international, not American

[B.D.Mills]

It is worth pointing out here that although the Internet was originally created in America, the Internet is now international. Do not make the mistake of assuming "United States == Whole World". I regret to say that Americans are notorious for making this error: consider World Series Baseball and the World Wrestling Federation: both are domestic American sporting organisations.

If you are going to debate such issues as jurisdiction, you must consider the Internet as an international resource, and consider the matter from the viewpoint of international law. Local laws with respect to the Internet are largely meaningless, and only help to fragment the Internet into a hodgepodge of chaotic regulation.

The world desperately needs uniform international law with respect to the Internet. We already have such laws with respect to such international items as international shipping, international air traffic and so forth. We should push for the Internet to be regulated internationally in the same manner.

unsolicited bulk commercial electronic mail

[unitron]

Apparently I can still send my fellow North Carolinians death threats, sexually harass them, send them chain letters, and generally clutter up their "in box" via the "magic" of e-mail while concealing my identity, as long as I'm not doing it in order to sell them a product or service.

Please Don't Advocate Legalising Spam

[Sinner]

The only way we can stamp out spam is by a combination of social, legal, technical and economic pressure. But if we allow the legalisation of spamming for the sake of some short term convenience (for the elite who can create mail filters), then that destroys the legal argument and weakens the effectiveness of the other three.

Consider this scenario: after 10 long years of work, the IETF and other standards bodies have finally managed to transition a critical mass of mail servers to use a new spam-proof version of SMTP. But then J. Random Scumbag sues them for violating their legally-mandated "right to spam".

We're in it for the long haul. Spam is not going to be gone next week, or next year. But we're winning the public opinion battle, most spammers go out of business within 3 months, and the technical solutions are getting better all the time. I'd hate to see us win the battle on the Internet only to lose it in the courtroom. Don't give the spammers what they want.