I think, in fact, we have rather strong evidence it's better to be dead...I mean, how think about how many living people voluntarily become dead vs how many dead people voluntarily become living.
It's not hard to 'prove' people are spammers at all. Are they trying to hide their identity? Did they hijack a computer to send their spam? Do they have the slightest idea who they sent their message too, or did they purchase a list?
Those are just some of the problems that come up after you determine that the reseller was the one who sent the message in the first place. Messages can be faked, you know.
A lot of stuff can be faked.
What can't be faked is the money trail. A company appeared to spam? Check their finances, see if they paid a spammer.
And once it becomes illegal to misuse an open proxy, all you do is, instead of shutting them down, get ISPs to watch connections to them, and trace those back to the source, and arrest those people, regardless of whether or not they spammed yet.
And once you get rid of open proxies, or make them unusable because many of them are legal traps, you make it much easier to trace the spammer in the first place. So you can attack from both ends.
It's trivially easy to determine a message is spam, and it's trivially easy to determine what reseller ID is sent with each message. Any accounts that get complaints about spam should be immediately suspended. (With, yes, appeals for the completely hypothetical case of spammers sending malicious reseller IDs of others.)
That's fine as a policy, but the law requires due process.
No it does, not to require a company to suspend an account. I point to the DMCA as an example. I submit a complaint that something is a copyright violation of my copyright, and the site gets suspended.
Do the same thing for spammers. Get, oh...twenty complaints a reseller ID is spamming, you must, at a minimum, not pay them any more money or allow them to access said money until there's an investigation.
And, of course, if people are lying about the site spamming, you go after them. If someone else is framing the person by spamming their ID, you go after them. Etc.
However, I don't think there will be anything that qualifies as 'spam' remaining legal once the laws are done correctly.
That's a great argument until you consider how to make such laws. So far all you came up with is that knowingly inducing someone to break the law should be illegal. That's already true. Got any other great suggestions, or should I just take your word that the holy grail of spam law is out there just waiting to be passed?
What are you talking about, that's not my only idea at all. I already mentioned misusing open proxies, which isn't, at this point, technically illegal, but it should be.
And everything should require opt-in. As a matter of fact, I think there should be a global opt-in registry, where site admin have to go and opt-in their domain to receive unsolicted bulk email, and any UBE sent to domaiins not on that list should be illegal.
Right now, we have a very few laws against some spam, stuff with forged headers and bad return addresses. Right now, someone can set up a hotmail 'opt-out' address (That of course doesn't work past twenty messages, and hotmail shuts it down before that anyway.), send spam though open proxies, and be in perfect complience with the law. Until that is illegal, pretending we have any laws against spamming is just stupid.
Granted, but the best legal grounds that I see are based on ownership rights, and the ownership rights of a server owner are much much stronger than the 'ownership' rights of an email account.
Trespass to chattel laws already handle the ownership rights. They require that you actually cause real damages to be invoked, of course. Your only valid analogy so far has been the one about the bullhorn. It's not perfect, because spamming someone across the globe is so easy, and because intentionally setting up an email account gives some implied consent, but you should notice that noise disturbance laws are not based on ownership rights. And there is a much clo
However, yes, I'd make reseller programs in violation of (some) law if they knowingly profited from spamming.
Knowingly is the key word.
They'd have to immediately shut down any accounts of spammers, and possibly even cancel any orders already made that were referred from that account.
They'd only have to shut down accounts of people who are proven to be spammers. That's pretty hard to prove. And which is it, do they have to cancel orders made or not?
It's not hard to 'prove' people are spammers at all. Are they trying to hide their identity? Did they hijack a computer to send their spam? Do they have the slightest idea who they sent their message too, or did they purchase a list?
Pretending we can't 'prove' people are spammers is idiotic, and completely out of touch with reality. It's trivially easy to determine a message is spam, and it's trivially easy to determine what reseller ID is sent with each message. Any accounts that get complaints about spam should be immediately suspended. (With, yes, appeals for the completely hypothetical case of spammers sending malicious reseller IDs of others.)
As for cancelling existing order made from spam...yes, I think that's the best way for a company to show that it did not intend to work with spammers. Whether or not that should be a legal requirement, I do not know, but it should certainly be an action companies should consider when they discover they had a spammer operating in their name, simply to show they didn't make any profit from the spammer.
Legally, though, there might be issues with requiring it, and I can see cases where it could be abused.
I think we need some more laws to stop spammers, although I certainly wouldn't phrase it as a 'law against spam'. We need some laws to punish habitual abusers of other people's computers.
So spam which is not in violation of other laws should continue to be legal?
I just said we need more laws. Of course, anything that isn't against the new laws will remain legal, that's the definition of 'not against the law'.
However, I don't think there will be anything that qualifies as 'spam' remaining legal once the laws are done correctly.
Part of the problem is that the laws end up treating email boxes as property, instead of email servers as property.
That's because the true problem of spam is not the costs to the server. That's merely a small fraction of a penny per email, and it's a cost which is voluntarily accepted by the recipient. The true problem is the nuisance caused by the spam.
Granted, but the best legal grounds that I see are based on ownership rights, and the ownership rights of a server owner are much much stronger than the 'ownership' rights of an email account.
What are you talking about? Email isn't anonymous. It's directly traceable to an IP address.
An IP address is not a person. If it were, then there would be no unsolicited email. You'd just block mail from any people from whom you hadn't solicited mail.
Right, and it's hard to track an account to a person.
But that doesn't make email anonymous. (Except, of course, WRT anonymous remailers and whatnot.)
And your last sentence makes no sense. Almost everyone 'solicts' mail from quite a lot of people. I use my email address on Usenet, I'm soliciting mail in regard to my postings. I have a (throwaway) email address here, and I solicit email in regard to my discussions here at that address, etc.
'Anonymous' and 'solicit' have almost nothing to do with each other. Hell, you can solicit anonymous messages about a certain topic, or anonymously solicit messages.
Excapt, of course, that criminals are running around hijacking other people's computers. If that makes the email system anonymous, then the phone system is anonymous because criminals can break into other's houses and make phone calls.
However, I think a law that targetted the people who pay spammers would be a useful start...they are easier to track down than spammers.
I doubt it. Most of the spam I receive is either selling obviously illegal products or is selling something through a reseller program. You don't want to ban reseller programs, do you?
I don't get any actually illegal stuff, although some of it is iffy, like prescription drugs for cheap and supposed child pornography. (I doubt it's actualy child porn, though.)
Meanwhile I get plenty of completely legal spam, like penis enlargement, private investigator, and septic tank spam.
I don't get any reseller spam anymore, but what spam people get varies widely, so that's not really saying much. However, yes, I'd make reseller programs in violation of (some) law if they knowingly profited from spamming. They'd have to immediately shut down any accounts of spammers, and possibly even cancel any orders already made that were referred from that account.
I didn't say we did.
Let's get it straight then. Do you think we need a law against spam or not?
I think we need some more laws to stop spammers, although I certainly wouldn't phrase it as a 'law against spam'. We need some laws to punish habitual abusers of other people's computers.
However, I didn't mention needing any new laws in the original post you responded to, I just mentioned how they were already in violation of various laws.
Note I give a 553 error after connection, before they do anything
Then you yourself are in violation of the RFC. Why don't you just not accept the connection in the first place?
so that would obviously map 'don't attempt that again, in that order', to 'don't connect here again', as that's all they've done!
Actually, I don't think that's obvious at all. 553 is supposed to be a response code, not something which is sent upon connection. It's meaning when sent upon connection is completely undefined.
I'm sorry, I went and checked to make sure it was on connection (and not after the HELO), and it's a 554 error if their IP is banned. 553 is the error they get if they're on a rbldns I check, and they get that much later, after they tell me who they want to talk to, so they can still get through to postmaster. (They don't get to get through to anyone if they've been banned.)
And, yes, a response code is sent immediately upon connection, either success or error.
What we need is the couurts to realize it's not content, it's consent.
None of the laws are phrased that way. A law which banned all unsolicited email, without exception, wouldn't be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but none of the laws actually do that. Furthermore, the dormant commerce clause is being violated regardless of the free speech and equal protection issues.
Right. The laws need to be aimed at the abuse of computer systems, not at the nonsense they end up being aimed at. (Part of the problem is that the laws end up treating email boxes as property, instead of email servers as property.)
We need stricter laws against accessing people's computers without their consent, aimed specifically at the violations that are occuring over SMTP.
I don't see how that's possible. The very nature of email is based upon sending unsolicited messages. If you only want solicited messages use a pull protocol, not a push one.
Well, mainly, because the people doing so are deliberately hard to track down.
That's the nature of email. It is anonymous. If you don't want to accept anonymous communications, then you shouldn't be accepting emails, certainly not ones with digital signatures, anyway.
Most spammers, about 99% of them, sit and abuse illegally hijacked machines that have had open proxies installed on them.
That's not true.
That's not true? My god, what a rebuttal!
Seriously, yes, it is. Either that or large quanties of users on cable modems and DSL have started spamming, and at the same time happen to have installed an open proxy. I personally regard that as fairly unlikely.
I'm the guy in charge of sitting down and checking the logs to make sure that legit addresses aren't being blocked, and, trust me, about 80% of it is from obviously hijacked machines, with reverse DNS from Comcast or AT&T broadband or whatever, who have been blocked because anti-spammers have discovered open proxies on them. (And there are still some open relays out there!) And I think most of the rest of it is too, but cannot be sure.
While this is not technically illegal, the spammers are the ones installing said open proxies. This is obviously a violation of various computer crime laws.
And obviously the law isn't doing anything to stop it. Why will yet another law do any good?
Did I say another law would do any good? However, I think a law that targetted the people who pay spammers would be a useful start...they are easier to track down than spammers. (Which is why the law doesn't work, these open proxies, quite delibrately, don't keep logs.)
And the ones that do not use hijacked machines...well, let's think about this. They're trying to use my computer resources. It's a violation of various computer crimes to use resources that you are not authorized to use.
Again, if there's already a law, why do we need another one?
I didn't say we did.
But wait! I'm sitting there with an open SMTP port, I must be willing to accept all SMTP contact. Sadly, that falls apart...in the SMTP standard there are quite clearly defined replies meaning 'do not attempt to deliver this message again'.
Please provide more information and a link to back up this statement. My cursory glance at the SMTP standard did not see any such reply.
Any 5xx error is a permanent failure. I quote from RFC2821:
5yz Permanent Negative Completion reply The command was not accepted and the requested action did not occur. The SMTP client is discouraged from repeating the exact request (in the same sequence). Even some "permanent" error conditions can be corrected, so the human user may want to direct the SMTP client to reinitiate the command sequence by direct action at some point in the future (e.g., after the spelling has been changed, or the user has altered the account status).
Note I give a 553 error after connection, before they do anything...so that would obviously map 'don't attempt that again, in that order', to 'don't connect here again', as that's all they've done! Although I quite understand if an SMTP client isn't smart enough to remember that forever...it's really assumed to only apply to a single message, even though technically it could be made to apply to repeating any interaction.
And not a single company takes these '55x' error messages and stop sending. My mail server gets pounded and pounded over and over again, as they connect to my machine despite my clearly denying them access. I'm talking several thousand rejects sent out a day, and there aren't that many spammers.
Are they required to stop sending all messages, or only that particular message? From your description they only need to stop "attempt[ing] to deliver this message again [em mine]."
The protocol requires them to stop sending the message (at least without a human intervening to fix it.). Irnoically, a human intervening to fix it is exactly what I want, as the error message which is returned with the error code specifies they have to leave me alone.
In other words...they aren't allowed to retry without finding out what's wrong, and when they
Yeah, and if I wanted to get someone in trouble all I'd have to do is find someone who they disliked, and hire someone to kill them, framing that person!
It's amazing how many people are stuck in the late-nineties WRT spam.
Spammers are criminals. They go around hijacking people's computers on cable modems. Let me repeat that. They go around installing trojans in people's computers to control them. This can be a felony.
Spammers are criminals. They go around stealing IP address ranges belonging to non-functioning companies and lying to ISPs about their ownership, making them extremely hard to trace. This can be a felony.
Spammers are criminals. They not only lie in their return address, picking innocent companies, they often lie out of malic, picking various anti-spammers, who then have their mailbox cripped under complaints. This sadly is not a felony until the law realizes it's a DDoS.
Spammers are criminals. They steal credit cards numbers to sign up for dialup accounts. This is a felony.
Spammers are criminals. They are not people operating on the edge of the law, they are operating way outside the law.
Spammers are criminals, and not pansy-ass jay-walkers...spammers are usually felons, at least if they've been doing it for any amount of time.
A bill to make them tell the truth in their headers is about as useful as a bill requiring rapists to be AIDS tested before raping people, or they'll be fined 100 dollars.
Most spammers, about 99% of them, sit and abuse illegally hijacked machines that have had open proxies installed on them. While this is not technically illegal, the spammers are the ones installing said open proxies. This is obviously a violation of various computer crime laws. (It's rather akin to several hundred burglers running around with lockpicks. Sure, someone else might have unlocked the door they are caught behind...but it's breaking and entering, they've just managed to split it in half, where half of them do the breaking, and a bunch come around later and enter.)
And the ones that do not use hijacked machines...well, let's think about this. They're trying to use my computer resources. It's a violation of various computer crimes to use resources that you are not authorized to use.
But wait! I'm sitting there with an open SMTP port, I must be willing to accept all SMTP contact. Sadly, that falls apart...in the SMTP standard there are quite clearly defined replies meaning 'do not attempt to deliver this message again'.
And not a single company takes these '55x' error messages and stop sending. My mail server gets pounded and pounded over and over again, as they connect to my machine despite my clearly denying them access. I'm talking several thousand rejects sent out a day, and there aren't that many spammers.
Look at that. Spammers operating in blatant violation of various computer crime laws.
Pretending what spammers do is completely legal is absurd. Maybe if they were operating using their own machines (as, admittedly, about 1% do.), and if they actually follow the protocols requiring them to stop attempting to deliver message, they would be legally in the clear as long as no one had passed a law against it...but they don't.(And people have passed laws against it, at least where my mail server is.)
It's simply illegal to continue to access a machine that you have been notified you are not authorized to access it, and my rejection message clearly tells them to never attempt to contact my machien again. Even if they don't see the message, the protocol itself said that a mailer should never attempt to deliver the message again.
That sounds like a great idea, and it was...ten years ago.
Nowadays, spammers are hijacking users on cable modems, and the world is divided into people who are spammers, ISPs who delibrately support spammers, ISPs who are fighting spammers, and clueless users with hijacked machines.
And the question becomes: Why the fuck are you living in Washington DC if you want representation?
I mean, seriously, people. No one has to live in DC except the president, and he doesn't need Congressional representation. All Congressmen have a place in DC, but, duh, they rather obviously have Congresional representation.
'Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this!' 'Well...stop doing that!'
If you want to vote on your state's electors that make up the electorial college...maybe you should live in a frickin state!
And I'm a little confused as to why they should get a vote and not people in other US territories, like Guam and the Virgin Islands and Iraq. (Just kidding about Iraq, ha ha.)
That's because they aren't allowed to say anything about their durgs without putting up large disclaimers.
You know what I want to do? I want to show people burning alive, hidiously deformed people running around, a landfill, then say 'Ask your doctor about Paxil' or some real drug.
Sure, the drug companies will hit the roof, but I haven't actually said anything about their product, according to their logic.
I want to to require each drug company, every time they run an ad that mentions a drug, to include full and dtailed medical information about that drug, with every scrap of research that's ever been done on it.
It's called 'Them', and it starts with the guy running upstairs, as he's about to leave his house, for no reason at all, with his wife trying to stop him. It's pouring down rain outside, but from one of the upstair windows it's perfectly clear and sunny.
I won't tell you what's going on, but it's not impossible to figure out.
You don't need to blow air, people moving along would quite naturally pull air along with them. Especially if you made the tube the belt was in smooth. (Which you want to do anyway, as having doorknobs and stuff sticking out is a good way to clip someone in the stomach.)
You need to make sure that, whatever you do, you jam both of them at once if one of them jams.
It seems stupid that someone jamming the handles should jam the walkway, but once I was going down an escalator, casually leaning on the rail to look at some store, and some idiotic kids at the top of the escalator stuck something in the railing (whcih for some reason was partially open) and made the handhold jump track. So suddenly I was leaning on something that had stopped moving...and my feet kept going, and I quickly landed on my ass on the step above me. Luckily it was the down escalator, if it had been the up escalator, I would have 'landed on my ass on the step below me', which of course doesn't actually work and results in people rolling down the stairs.
Trust me, it's much better for the whole thing to shudder and stop than half of it to do so, as people can easily be equally attached to the floor and any handles. Especially with loops from the ceiling...you could end up trying to pull someone's arm off!
When you get on them, and start walking down, they should just slowly accellerate the steps downward. And the same upward.
What's the advantage, you ask? You only need one escalator for both up and down. If two people get on at once, it simply runs both of you together, you step past each other (Remember, you're walk along the steps anyway.) and it picks up past that.
Granted, detecting you turned around would be a neat trick (But you can't do that on normal escalators anyway.), as would the needed 'steps in the middle disappearing' if two people ran into each other.
That last problem sound near impossible, but I'm actually thinking it would have something like moveable rollers, where there are no 'steps', just rollers that stick up and make a flat place for you to stand on, and roll you forward onto the next rollers as they sink downward (or raise upward), if that makes sense.
And, of course, it's a lot easier for flat conveyer belts, you don't have to sink the rollers.
Sounds absurd, but someday this slashdot post may end up being prior art!;)
And Asimov brought up the actual problem you'd run into...not strikers sabatoging the sidewalks, but hot-shot teenagers running around leaping from one to another.
If each strip is only 10 feet wide, and goes up 5 mph each strip...you just know you'd have kids running the 50 yard dash sideways, occasionally causing major accidents.
To steal something, you must deprive someone of something, and more specifically deprive them of something of value.
For example, breathing air in their building is not theft, as air logically has no value, at least not on earth. Thus breaking into someone's building and walking around is, of course, breaking and entering, but it's not 'theft' of air, as air is worthless. Likewise, taking things from a trash can isn't theft, as things that have been thrown away are reasonably assumed to have no value.
However, what you are trying to argue is something on the border of that, claiming one thing when they take the object, but it's obviously not true.
Magazines, when returned to the publisher to be pulped, do have value to shopkeeper, as the shopkeeper gets paid for them when the publisher carts them off. So taking them from the shopkeeper is obviously theft.
Likewise, tearing pages out of the magazines in the shop is theft. You can't see the future, you don't know what's going to happen to those magazines.
Even if they don't get sold, you still stole from someone...the companies pulp magazines for reason, they end up paying less royalties and whatnot for each copy detroyed. Likewise, they end up paying back advertisers.
So you've managed to keep an addtional copy that was reported as destroyed, and paid for as destroyed, thus moving quite a lot of money around. Saying that copy of the magazine had no 'value' is clearly wrong, as money would be in different places was part of it known to be intact.
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I think, in fact, we have rather strong evidence it's better to be dead...I mean, how think about how many living people voluntarily become dead vs how many dead people voluntarily become living.
Those are just some of the problems that come up after you determine that the reseller was the one who sent the message in the first place. Messages can be faked, you know.
A lot of stuff can be faked.
What can't be faked is the money trail. A company appeared to spam? Check their finances, see if they paid a spammer.
And once it becomes illegal to misuse an open proxy, all you do is, instead of shutting them down, get ISPs to watch connections to them, and trace those back to the source, and arrest those people, regardless of whether or not they spammed yet.
And once you get rid of open proxies, or make them unusable because many of them are legal traps, you make it much easier to trace the spammer in the first place. So you can attack from both ends.
It's trivially easy to determine a message is spam, and it's trivially easy to determine what reseller ID is sent with each message. Any accounts that get complaints about spam should be immediately suspended. (With, yes, appeals for the completely hypothetical case of spammers sending malicious reseller IDs of others.)
That's fine as a policy, but the law requires due process.
No it does, not to require a company to suspend an account. I point to the DMCA as an example. I submit a complaint that something is a copyright violation of my copyright, and the site gets suspended.
Do the same thing for spammers. Get, oh...twenty complaints a reseller ID is spamming, you must, at a minimum, not pay them any more money or allow them to access said money until there's an investigation.
And, of course, if people are lying about the site spamming, you go after them. If someone else is framing the person by spamming their ID, you go after them. Etc.
However, I don't think there will be anything that qualifies as 'spam' remaining legal once the laws are done correctly.
That's a great argument until you consider how to make such laws. So far all you came up with is that knowingly inducing someone to break the law should be illegal. That's already true. Got any other great suggestions, or should I just take your word that the holy grail of spam law is out there just waiting to be passed?
What are you talking about, that's not my only idea at all. I already mentioned misusing open proxies, which isn't, at this point, technically illegal, but it should be.
And everything should require opt-in. As a matter of fact, I think there should be a global opt-in registry, where site admin have to go and opt-in their domain to receive unsolicted bulk email, and any UBE sent to domaiins not on that list should be illegal.
Right now, we have a very few laws against some spam, stuff with forged headers and bad return addresses. Right now, someone can set up a hotmail 'opt-out' address (That of course doesn't work past twenty messages, and hotmail shuts it down before that anyway.), send spam though open proxies, and be in perfect complience with the law. Until that is illegal, pretending we have any laws against spamming is just stupid.
Granted, but the best legal grounds that I see are based on ownership rights, and the ownership rights of a server owner are much much stronger than the 'ownership' rights of an email account.
Trespass to chattel laws already handle the ownership rights. They require that you actually cause real damages to be invoked, of course. Your only valid analogy so far has been the one about the bullhorn. It's not perfect, because spamming someone across the globe is so easy, and because intentionally setting up an email account gives some implied consent, but you should notice that noise disturbance laws are not based on ownership rights. And there is a much clo
Knowingly is the key word.
They'd have to immediately shut down any accounts of spammers, and possibly even cancel any orders already made that were referred from that account.
They'd only have to shut down accounts of people who are proven to be spammers. That's pretty hard to prove. And which is it, do they have to cancel orders made or not?
It's not hard to 'prove' people are spammers at all. Are they trying to hide their identity? Did they hijack a computer to send their spam? Do they have the slightest idea who they sent their message too, or did they purchase a list?
Pretending we can't 'prove' people are spammers is idiotic, and completely out of touch with reality. It's trivially easy to determine a message is spam, and it's trivially easy to determine what reseller ID is sent with each message. Any accounts that get complaints about spam should be immediately suspended. (With, yes, appeals for the completely hypothetical case of spammers sending malicious reseller IDs of others.)
As for cancelling existing order made from spam...yes, I think that's the best way for a company to show that it did not intend to work with spammers. Whether or not that should be a legal requirement, I do not know, but it should certainly be an action companies should consider when they discover they had a spammer operating in their name, simply to show they didn't make any profit from the spammer.
Legally, though, there might be issues with requiring it, and I can see cases where it could be abused.
I think we need some more laws to stop spammers, although I certainly wouldn't phrase it as a 'law against spam'. We need some laws to punish habitual abusers of other people's computers.
So spam which is not in violation of other laws should continue to be legal?
I just said we need more laws. Of course, anything that isn't against the new laws will remain legal, that's the definition of 'not against the law'.
However, I don't think there will be anything that qualifies as 'spam' remaining legal once the laws are done correctly.
Part of the problem is that the laws end up treating email boxes as property, instead of email servers as property.
That's because the true problem of spam is not the costs to the server. That's merely a small fraction of a penny per email, and it's a cost which is voluntarily accepted by the recipient. The true problem is the nuisance caused by the spam.
Granted, but the best legal grounds that I see are based on ownership rights, and the ownership rights of a server owner are much much stronger than the 'ownership' rights of an email account.
What are you talking about? Email isn't anonymous. It's directly traceable to an IP address.
An IP address is not a person. If it were, then there would be no unsolicited email. You'd just block mail from any people from whom you hadn't solicited mail.
Right, and it's hard to track an account to a person.
But that doesn't make email anonymous. (Except, of course, WRT anonymous remailers and whatnot.)
And your last sentence makes no sense. Almost everyone 'solicts' mail from quite a lot of people. I use my email address on Usenet, I'm soliciting mail in regard to my postings. I have a (throwaway) email address here, and I solicit email in regard to my discussions here at that address, etc.
'Anonymous' and 'solicit' have almost nothing to do with each other. Hell, you can solicit anonymous messages about a certain topic, or anonymously solicit messages.
Excapt, of course, that criminals are running around hijacking other people's computers. If that makes the email system anonymous, then the phone system is anonymous because criminals can break into other's houses and make phone calls.
There are p
If not, then what exactly did you say?
Well, my post is right up there to read.
However, I think a law that targetted the people who pay spammers would be a useful start...they are easier to track down than spammers.
I doubt it. Most of the spam I receive is either selling obviously illegal products or is selling something through a reseller program. You don't want to ban reseller programs, do you?
I don't get any actually illegal stuff, although some of it is iffy, like prescription drugs for cheap and supposed child pornography. (I doubt it's actualy child porn, though.)
Meanwhile I get plenty of completely legal spam, like penis enlargement, private investigator, and septic tank spam.
I don't get any reseller spam anymore, but what spam people get varies widely, so that's not really saying much. However, yes, I'd make reseller programs in violation of (some) law if they knowingly profited from spamming. They'd have to immediately shut down any accounts of spammers, and possibly even cancel any orders already made that were referred from that account.
I didn't say we did.
Let's get it straight then. Do you think we need a law against spam or not?
I think we need some more laws to stop spammers, although I certainly wouldn't phrase it as a 'law against spam'. We need some laws to punish habitual abusers of other people's computers.
However, I didn't mention needing any new laws in the original post you responded to, I just mentioned how they were already in violation of various laws.
Note I give a 553 error after connection, before they do anything
Then you yourself are in violation of the RFC. Why don't you just not accept the connection in the first place?
so that would obviously map 'don't attempt that again, in that order', to 'don't connect here again', as that's all they've done!
Actually, I don't think that's obvious at all. 553 is supposed to be a response code, not something which is sent upon connection. It's meaning when sent upon connection is completely undefined.
I'm sorry, I went and checked to make sure it was on connection (and not after the HELO), and it's a 554 error if their IP is banned. 553 is the error they get if they're on a rbldns I check, and they get that much later, after they tell me who they want to talk to, so they can still get through to postmaster. (They don't get to get through to anyone if they've been banned.)
And, yes, a response code is sent immediately upon connection, either success or error.
What we need is the couurts to realize it's not content, it's consent.
None of the laws are phrased that way. A law which banned all unsolicited email, without exception, wouldn't be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but none of the laws actually do that. Furthermore, the dormant commerce clause is being violated regardless of the free speech and equal protection issues.
Right. The laws need to be aimed at the abuse of computer systems, not at the nonsense they end up being aimed at. (Part of the problem is that the laws end up treating email boxes as property, instead of email servers as property.)
We need stricter laws against accessing people's computers without their consent, aimed specifically at the violations that are occuring over SMTP.
I don't see how that's possible. The very nature of email is based upon sending unsolicited messages. If you only want solicited messages use a pull protocol, not a push one.
Well, mainly, because the people doing so are deliberately hard to track down.
That's the nature of email. It is anonymous. If you don't want to accept anonymous communications, then you shouldn't be accepting emails, certainly not ones with digital signatures, anyway.
What are you talking about?
That's not true.
That's not true? My god, what a rebuttal!
Seriously, yes, it is. Either that or large quanties of users on cable modems and DSL have started spamming, and at the same time happen to have installed an open proxy. I personally regard that as fairly unlikely.
I'm the guy in charge of sitting down and checking the logs to make sure that legit addresses aren't being blocked, and, trust me, about 80% of it is from obviously hijacked machines, with reverse DNS from Comcast or AT&T broadband or whatever, who have been blocked because anti-spammers have discovered open proxies on them. (And there are still some open relays out there!) And I think most of the rest of it is too, but cannot be sure.
While this is not technically illegal, the spammers are the ones installing said open proxies. This is obviously a violation of various computer crime laws.
And obviously the law isn't doing anything to stop it. Why will yet another law do any good?
Did I say another law would do any good? However, I think a law that targetted the people who pay spammers would be a useful start...they are easier to track down than spammers. (Which is why the law doesn't work, these open proxies, quite delibrately, don't keep logs.)
And the ones that do not use hijacked machines...well, let's think about this. They're trying to use my computer resources. It's a violation of various computer crimes to use resources that you are not authorized to use.
Again, if there's already a law, why do we need another one?
I didn't say we did.
But wait! I'm sitting there with an open SMTP port, I must be willing to accept all SMTP contact. Sadly, that falls apart...in the SMTP standard there are quite clearly defined replies meaning 'do not attempt to deliver this message again'.
Please provide more information and a link to back up this statement. My cursory glance at the SMTP standard did not see any such reply.
Any 5xx error is a permanent failure. I quote from RFC2821:
5yz Permanent Negative Completion reply
The command was not accepted and the requested action did not occur. The SMTP client is discouraged from repeating the exact request (in the same sequence). Even some "permanent" error conditions can be corrected, so the human user may want to direct the SMTP client to reinitiate the command sequence by direct action at some point in the future (e.g., after the spelling has been changed, or the user has altered the account status).
Note I give a 553 error after connection, before they do anything...so that would obviously map 'don't attempt that again, in that order', to 'don't connect here again', as that's all they've done! Although I quite understand if an SMTP client isn't smart enough to remember that forever...it's really assumed to only apply to a single message, even though technically it could be made to apply to repeating any interaction.
And not a single company takes these '55x' error messages and stop sending. My mail server gets pounded and pounded over and over again, as they connect to my machine despite my clearly denying them access. I'm talking several thousand rejects sent out a day, and there aren't that many spammers.
Are they required to stop sending all messages, or only that particular message? From your description they only need to stop "attempt[ing] to deliver this message again [em mine]."
The protocol requires them to stop sending the message (at least without a human intervening to fix it.). Irnoically, a human intervening to fix it is exactly what I want, as the error message which is returned with the error code specifies they have to leave me alone.
In other words...they aren't allowed to retry without finding out what's wrong, and when they
My god! We better get rid of all laws, right now!
Don't fall for the spammer's BS.
Let's say there are 100 million businesses in the US.
So every business gets a single message before you opt out, eh?
Hell, you don't even have to do the math to see have insane that concept is.
And that's pretending businesses are static. They might be 100 million this year, and 100 million the next, but 10 million of them might be new.
If we assume there are just one million new businesses a year...that's about 11.5 a second.
Time to start opting out.
Spammers are criminals. They go around hijacking people's computers on cable modems. Let me repeat that. They go around installing trojans in people's computers to control them. This can be a felony.
Spammers are criminals. They go around stealing IP address ranges belonging to non-functioning companies and lying to ISPs about their ownership, making them extremely hard to trace. This can be a felony.
Spammers are criminals. They not only lie in their return address, picking innocent companies, they often lie out of malic, picking various anti-spammers, who then have their mailbox cripped under complaints. This sadly is not a felony until the law realizes it's a DDoS.
Spammers are criminals. They steal credit cards numbers to sign up for dialup accounts. This is a felony.
Spammers are criminals. They are not people operating on the edge of the law, they are operating way outside the law.
Spammers are criminals, and not pansy-ass jay-walkers...spammers are usually felons, at least if they've been doing it for any amount of time.
A bill to make them tell the truth in their headers is about as useful as a bill requiring rapists to be AIDS tested before raping people, or they'll be fined 100 dollars.
And the ones that do not use hijacked machines...well, let's think about this. They're trying to use my computer resources. It's a violation of various computer crimes to use resources that you are not authorized to use.
But wait! I'm sitting there with an open SMTP port, I must be willing to accept all SMTP contact. Sadly, that falls apart...in the SMTP standard there are quite clearly defined replies meaning 'do not attempt to deliver this message again'.
And not a single company takes these '55x' error messages and stop sending. My mail server gets pounded and pounded over and over again, as they connect to my machine despite my clearly denying them access. I'm talking several thousand rejects sent out a day, and there aren't that many spammers.
Look at that. Spammers operating in blatant violation of various computer crime laws.
Pretending what spammers do is completely legal is absurd. Maybe if they were operating using their own machines (as, admittedly, about 1% do.), and if they actually follow the protocols requiring them to stop attempting to deliver message, they would be legally in the clear as long as no one had passed a law against it...but they don't.(And people have passed laws against it, at least where my mail server is.)
It's simply illegal to continue to access a machine that you have been notified you are not authorized to access it, and my rejection message clearly tells them to never attempt to contact my machien again. Even if they don't see the message, the protocol itself said that a mailer should never attempt to deliver the message again.
It's computer trespass, pure and simple.
Nowadays, spammers are hijacking users on cable modems, and the world is divided into people who are spammers, ISPs who delibrately support spammers, ISPs who are fighting spammers, and clueless users with hijacked machines.
Hence all the idiotic commerials that don't even explain what the product is for, so they don't run disclaimers.
I mean, seriously, people. No one has to live in DC except the president, and he doesn't need Congressional representation. All Congressmen have a place in DC, but, duh, they rather obviously have Congresional representation.
'Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this!' 'Well...stop doing that!'
If you want to vote on your state's electors that make up the electorial college...maybe you should live in a frickin state!
And I'm a little confused as to why they should get a vote and not people in other US territories, like Guam and the Virgin Islands and Iraq. (Just kidding about Iraq, ha ha.)
You know what I want to do? I want to show people burning alive, hidiously deformed people running around, a landfill, then say 'Ask your doctor about Paxil' or some real drug.
Sure, the drug companies will hit the roof, but I haven't actually said anything about their product, according to their logic.
I want to to require each drug company, every time they run an ad that mentions a drug, to include full and dtailed medical information about that drug, with every scrap of research that's ever been done on it.
I don't see where it's illegal to make a slave out of yourself, although such contracts haven't held up in court.
I won't tell you what's going on, but it's not impossible to figure out.
You realize 'Seinfield's Puddy' is, of course, Patrick Warburton, the guy who's starring in the TV show we are in fact discussing, right?
Not only does all the entire South have TVs, but we all get The Whittling Channel.
You don't need to blow air, people moving along would quite naturally pull air along with them. Especially if you made the tube the belt was in smooth. (Which you want to do anyway, as having doorknobs and stuff sticking out is a good way to clip someone in the stomach.)
It seems stupid that someone jamming the handles should jam the walkway, but once I was going down an escalator, casually leaning on the rail to look at some store, and some idiotic kids at the top of the escalator stuck something in the railing (whcih for some reason was partially open) and made the handhold jump track. So suddenly I was leaning on something that had stopped moving...and my feet kept going, and I quickly landed on my ass on the step above me. Luckily it was the down escalator, if it had been the up escalator, I would have 'landed on my ass on the step below me', which of course doesn't actually work and results in people rolling down the stairs.
Trust me, it's much better for the whole thing to shudder and stop than half of it to do so, as people can easily be equally attached to the floor and any handles. Especially with loops from the ceiling...you could end up trying to pull someone's arm off!
When you get on them, and start walking down, they should just slowly accellerate the steps downward. And the same upward.
What's the advantage, you ask? You only need one escalator for both up and down. If two people get on at once, it simply runs both of you together, you step past each other (Remember, you're walk along the steps anyway.) and it picks up past that.
Granted, detecting you turned around would be a neat trick (But you can't do that on normal escalators anyway.), as would the needed 'steps in the middle disappearing' if two people ran into each other.
That last problem sound near impossible, but I'm actually thinking it would have something like moveable rollers, where there are no 'steps', just rollers that stick up and make a flat place for you to stand on, and roll you forward onto the next rollers as they sink downward (or raise upward), if that makes sense.
And, of course, it's a lot easier for flat conveyer belts, you don't have to sink the rollers.
Sounds absurd, but someday this slashdot post may end up being prior art! ;)
If each strip is only 10 feet wide, and goes up 5 mph each strip...you just know you'd have kids running the 50 yard dash sideways, occasionally causing major accidents.
Yeah, only the authorities and building owners have the right to photograph us without our knowledge!
Well, I'm off to rape some MP3s. See you loons later.
There is no such thing as 'intellectual property', and the only way to 'steal' copyrights is to forge a letter to the copyright office.
Anything less than that is a copyright infringment.
For example, breathing air in their building is not theft, as air logically has no value, at least not on earth. Thus breaking into someone's building and walking around is, of course, breaking and entering, but it's not 'theft' of air, as air is worthless. Likewise, taking things from a trash can isn't theft, as things that have been thrown away are reasonably assumed to have no value.
However, what you are trying to argue is something on the border of that, claiming one thing when they take the object, but it's obviously not true.
Magazines, when returned to the publisher to be pulped, do have value to shopkeeper, as the shopkeeper gets paid for them when the publisher carts them off. So taking them from the shopkeeper is obviously theft.
Likewise, tearing pages out of the magazines in the shop is theft. You can't see the future, you don't know what's going to happen to those magazines.
Even if they don't get sold, you still stole from someone...the companies pulp magazines for reason, they end up paying less royalties and whatnot for each copy detroyed. Likewise, they end up paying back advertisers.
So you've managed to keep an addtional copy that was reported as destroyed, and paid for as destroyed, thus moving quite a lot of money around. Saying that copy of the magazine had no 'value' is clearly wrong, as money would be in different places was part of it known to be intact.