Did you happen to read the article? He discusses this at length. He makes a strong argument that his system is actually pretty robust, since to get around it consistantly the spam has to look just like your real email, which is pretty darn hard for them to do.
In a lot of ways this problem is like cheating in games. As long as you're the only one who knows the exploit, you can be pretty sure that it's not going to get fixed, though you'll still get kicked off every server you play on. Similarly, with his method a spammer might be able to find a particular phrasing that's likely to get through, though his messages will still be deleted on arrival. But even if he does, if he starts sending you too many emails or starts selling his technique the filter will adapt with the spam and start filtering it out.
Making something illegal doesn't make someone stop doing it, obviously. All it does is increase the risks of doing the action. If it's still worth it to you anyway (drug dealers, drug addicts), or you're not thinking about the consequences of your actions (shooting the bastard who you just found in bed with your wife), or if you don't think that you're actually going to get caught (warez), you're not going to stop just because it's illegal.
Making spam illegal would probably cut down on people buying email lists and starting to spam in their free time because it seems like a great way to make some money. It might even cut down on the "legitimate businessmen" types here who do it professionally. It's going to have no effect internationally, however, and there's really not much you can do about it.
There's an interesting point about this in the article, however, when graham says:
"(I used to think it was naive to believe that stricter laws would decrease spam. Now I think that while stricter laws may not decrease the amount of spam that spammers send, they can certainly help filters to decrease the amount of spam that recipients actually see.)"
I would agree with this - it seems to me that for a lot of "crimes of this nature, drugs being the best example, the solution is not criminalization but regulation. People aren't going to stop dealing or using drugs, nor is it something as serious (like murder) that it's worth it to put them in jail anyway. If drugs were regulated, however, most of the problems could be easily reduced. Enforce strict controls to prevent cutting, ban advertisement, and tie sellers to treatment programs to help get people off of drugs. As long as there's no incentive for people to buy them illegally (ie, their being much cheaper or, as it is now, the only supply), people will buy them from regulated sellers.
Similarly if you regulate spam and make people attach footers you'll be less likely to drive people overseas to spam while also making it much easier to filter out.
Of course, there's still not much you can do about the Koreans, other than trying to get their government to do the same thing.
Besides, do you really want to encourage the government to effectively prohibit certain kinds of non-victimizing (non-kiddie porn) speech online?
I do think that, social problems aside, it's great that India is taking this step. Compromises have to be made in a society between progress and societal welfare and, indirectly, short-term and long-term benefits. What I want to know, though, is why they're not doing something new and useful? How much will they actually get out of this, compared to what they could get out of another space mission that tries something nobody has done before, even if it's more likely to fail? And wouldn't the prestige and "social standing" of the country be all the better for pushing existing boundries?
For the cost of setting up a lunar base (billions at least, presumably, even if you just filled a cave with air and put a door on it) and then sent 1% of the population there (~9,000,000 people) (god only knows) you could just buy a large chunk of russia/saudi arabia/montana/etc., ship the people there and buy them food for the rest of their lives. Obviously colonization woudln't be any sort of short-term solution, as no one's going to have the capability in the short term. It seems to me, however, that by the time it would actually be possible the population crisis will have already come to a head and we'll have either dealt with it or died trying. Or died ignoring it, for that matter, as would seem to be the current policy.
it had to be said. Seriously though, this is pretty neat stuff, IMO. India is an odd position - in a lot of ways they're first world (large democracy, good-when-present educational system, has nukes). At the same time they have horrible poverty, overpopulation, and religious strife. A moon mission is great. A good AIDs/population growth program would be too.
More to the point of the parent, this guy is opposed to both "libertarians and conservative congressmen," but he's not saying they're allied.
Libertarians (and anarchists:) tend to oppose just about any regulation of the internet, and particularly even "mild" limits on speech, this which the author of this article favors.
Conservative congressmen write things like the DMCA and this P2P hacking garbage, which he also opposes.
His basic point, which has some validity, seems to me to be that regionalizing the internet would, in a way, make it more democratic. Other countries are feeling the effect of opposing US political views towards the internet (those darn libertarians and conservative congressmen again), but with the structure as it is there's little they can do about it.
If you disagree with someone, that's fine, just make sure you understand what they're saying.
A lot of people are jumping down this guy's throat for getting ranty at points or laughing it off as a "never can happen."
It can, at least the important parts, and it very well might.
Headline or not, his proposition to segragate different regions of the internet is not the problem, it's the regulation.
The internet is the one place where (near)Anarchy works, and possibly the only place it can. It's not perfect, as he points out - there's spam, viruses, and MSN all over the place. But it's strength lies in its breadth, diversity, and freedom.
What makes you so sure that that freedom will survive the TCPA?
Look at what China's doing now, and how successful they are. Completely? No. With TCPA they can come a lot closer though. Those of us in Democracies don't have to fear that exact thread, we have to fear its opposite twin in the form of corporate control. Those of us in the US don't have to worry about the government censoring what we say online... unless it involves DeCSS, say, or anything else which irks the people with the money.
Ignore his rants, ignore his illogical conclusions, etc.... and there's still something very important sitting there.
Am I the only one willing to say I had the impression that ALICE helped in writing these responses? Seriously, they display a remarkable aptitude for going on at legth about a specific subject, but almost no comprehension of the actual question. Very frequently they open with something tangentially related and then move on to something completely different, a technique described mulitple times in the article.
What the hell, I'll say the emperor has no clothes.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you happen to read the article? He discusses this at length. He makes a strong argument that his system is actually pretty robust, since to get around it consistantly the spam has to look just like your real email, which is pretty darn hard for them to do.
In a lot of ways this problem is like cheating in games. As long as you're the only one who knows the exploit, you can be pretty sure that it's not going to get fixed, though you'll still get kicked off every server you play on. Similarly, with his method a spammer might be able to find a particular phrasing that's likely to get through, though his messages will still be deleted on arrival. But even if he does, if he starts sending you too many emails or starts selling his technique the filter will adapt with the spam and start filtering it out.
Making spam illegal would probably cut down on people buying email lists and starting to spam in their free time because it seems like a great way to make some money. It might even cut down on the "legitimate businessmen" types here who do it professionally. It's going to have no effect internationally, however, and there's really not much you can do about it.
There's an interesting point about this in the article, however, when graham says:
I would agree with this - it seems to me that for a lot of "crimes of this nature, drugs being the best example, the solution is not criminalization but regulation. People aren't going to stop dealing or using drugs, nor is it something as serious (like murder) that it's worth it to put them in jail anyway. If drugs were regulated, however, most of the problems could be easily reduced. Enforce strict controls to prevent cutting, ban advertisement, and tie sellers to treatment programs to help get people off of drugs. As long as there's no incentive for people to buy them illegally (ie, their being much cheaper or, as it is now, the only supply), people will buy them from regulated sellers.
Similarly if you regulate spam and make people attach footers you'll be less likely to drive people overseas to spam while also making it much easier to filter out.
Of course, there's still not much you can do about the Koreans, other than trying to get their government to do the same thing.
Besides, do you really want to encourage the government to effectively prohibit certain kinds of non-victimizing (non-kiddie porn) speech online?
I do think that, social problems aside, it's great that India is taking this step. Compromises have to be made in a society between progress and societal welfare and, indirectly, short-term and long-term benefits.
What I want to know, though, is why they're not doing something new and useful? How much will they actually get out of this, compared to what they could get out of another space mission that tries something nobody has done before, even if it's more likely to fail? And wouldn't the prestige and "social standing" of the country be all the better for pushing existing boundries?
For the cost of setting up a lunar base (billions at least, presumably, even if you just filled a cave with air and put a door on it) and then sent 1% of the population there (~9,000,000 people) (god only knows) you could just buy a large chunk of russia/saudi arabia/montana/etc., ship the people there and buy them food for the rest of their lives.
Obviously colonization woudln't be any sort of short-term solution, as no one's going to have the capability in the short term. It seems to me, however, that by the time it would actually be possible the population crisis will have already come to a head and we'll have either dealt with it or died trying. Or died ignoring it, for that matter, as would seem to be the current policy.
it had to be said. Seriously though, this is pretty neat stuff, IMO. India is an odd position - in a lot of ways they're first world (large democracy, good-when-present educational system, has nukes). At the same time they have horrible poverty, overpopulation, and religious strife. A moon mission is great. A good AIDs/population growth program would be too.
More to the point of the parent, this guy is opposed to both "libertarians and conservative congressmen," but he's not saying they're allied.
:) tend to oppose just about any regulation of the internet, and particularly even "mild" limits on speech, this which the author of this article favors.
Libertarians (and anarchists
Conservative congressmen write things like the DMCA and this P2P hacking garbage, which he also opposes.
His basic point, which has some validity, seems to me to be that regionalizing the internet would, in a way, make it more democratic. Other countries are feeling the effect of opposing US political views towards the internet (those darn libertarians and conservative congressmen again), but with the structure as it is there's little they can do about it.
If you disagree with someone, that's fine, just make sure you understand what they're saying.
It can, at least the important parts, and it very well might.
Headline or not, his proposition to segragate different regions of the internet is not the problem, it's the regulation.
The internet is the one place where (near)Anarchy works, and possibly the only place it can. It's not perfect, as he points out - there's spam, viruses, and MSN all over the place. But it's strength lies in its breadth, diversity, and freedom.
What makes you so sure that that freedom will survive the TCPA?
Look at what China's doing now, and how successful they are. Completely? No. With TCPA they can come a lot closer though. Those of us in Democracies don't have to fear that exact thread, we have to fear its opposite twin in the form of corporate control. Those of us in the US don't have to worry about the government censoring what we say online... unless it involves DeCSS, say, or anything else which irks the people with the money.
Ignore his rants, ignore his illogical conclusions, etc. ... and there's still something very important sitting there.
Am I the only one willing to say I had the impression that ALICE helped in writing these responses? Seriously, they display a remarkable aptitude for going on at legth about a specific subject, but almost no comprehension of the actual question. Very frequently they open with something tangentially related and then move on to something completely different, a technique described mulitple times in the article.
What the hell, I'll say the emperor has no clothes.