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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.
>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.
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
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.
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?).
.newsrc. I never got around to writing it, but I got plenty of requests for it.
:)
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
Hows that for "good old days" reminiscing? One troll on the entire usenet
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?
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.
"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."
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.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
A more complete quote:
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.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
That in mind, I would consider the following reforms to be reasonable for bulk snail mail:
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.
.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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Look at the bill. Scroll down. Scroll down some more. Stop.
14-458. Computer trespass; penalty.
Read that bit.
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...
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.
:)
:P
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
-kabloie
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.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
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.
fish and pipes