While they are typically slow to react to such things, hoping they will simply go away, a $1000 per month connection is not enough to risk being blacklisted by AOL or Yahoo. Try keeping a customer when they realize they can't send mail to at least one of their friends and family.
The fact that they aren't afraid of losing their connection isn't due to the fact that ISPs don't care, its because there are so many ISPs to choose from and they just use new (possibly fake) names and businesses to open new accounts.
It's wrong and its false. I'm pretty unlikely to hire a fresh out of school programmer, because I don't want to be the one that has to show them that at least half of the stuff they busted ass to learn in school is totally useless. I'd much rather hire a hobbyist who has opinions and experiences they can bring to the table with them.
I would have a hard time putting someone away for 20 years. I would think that a 1 or 2 year sentence, a few thousand hours of community service and a 5-10 year period with a Mitnick-style computer ban would be severe enough and would fit the crime better.
I wonder how much time of other peoples lives a spammer wastes? Consider they send 100 million spams, not an unrealistic number for a major spammer. Each one takes, say 2 seconds to delete on average, thats about 6 years.
You are looking at this like it's a technology job where skill matters. A good programmer is 10 times more valuable than a bad one, a good laborer is probably 25-50% better than a bad one. No matter how good you are a plowing the street, you don't have alot of leverage in convincing them that you are worth more money than the guy waiting to take your job. That's why they have unions, for better or worse.
That's what they say, but this is the standard response to any technology that affects the way laborers work. This is like the Questec system that baseball umpires don't like. I have a feeling that this system is far more accurate than the "I reckon I plowed about 200 miles last night" method that is currently used.
Reduce the number of printers and the paper will go away. A company I worked for had 3 or 4 printers per hundred people, meaning they were usually inconvenient. Also all faxes were centralized and they were emailed to us. My paper consumption was probably 10-50 pages per week, which is effectively paperless IMO.
Also, when someone hands you a printout of a spreadsheet or document, look at it, thank them, throw it out and ask for an electronic version. It won't be long before they stop wasting time and paper. When someone said they took notes at a meeting, ask them to email you a copy, and they will feel strange since they did it on paper instead of a PDA or a tablet PC. Successful technology adoption is a pull strategy, not a push. You need to provide the solution and let people discover its value on their own.
Yeah, I have to say from repeated experience that if a telemarketer calls my cell phone I just say "this is my cell phone" and they have without fail apologized and immediately hung up. I presume they also remove me from the list because I only get them once per month or so, which I would say is manageable.
Re:Bad Law - kills states remedies
on
Who Is An ISP?
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· Score: 1
Again, you're missing the point. I'm not talking about the WA law, I'm talking about some other law that doesn't have the provision you mentioned, like the CA one. And I'm also not talking about just email, I'm talking about any situation where one state is effectively legislating for all the others. Do you contact the ISP of every email you send mail to?
I've noticed in your other comments that you like to swear, which I have no problem with, but what if some state that a viewer read those comments in said that you were violating their laws? After all it says at the bottom of the page that you own the post, therefore you are responsible for it? Have you checked every state law on the subject of obscene remarks (as well as how they define obscene)? Do not answer these questions, I'm merely trying to illustrate that state laws shouldn't legislate things that the state can't control, and that pretty much covers everything about the Internet. If they want to outlaw sending spam when the person is physically in the state, that's fine, but anything beyond that is too much. It's the same reason that the federal government regulates interstate commerce.
Movie ratings are only voluntary in theory, not in practice. When was the last time you saw an unrated movie at a major chain? Sure the indie theaters will show them but many towns don't even have those. If you want to make money on your movie, you have to rate it, no way around it. And you also need to have an R rating or "better", because the chains won't show NC-17.
Is this censorship? Sure. Do I think it's wrong? I'm really not sure, but I do know that saying its voluntary is stretching the truth. I wouldn't want my kids playing GTA. I'd like to be able to tell, without spending hours playing a game, that it's right for my children, so the warning labels and ratings do serve a valuable purpose. I don't like the fact that Walmart and other stores refuse to carry any CD with explicit lyrics, and I don't like the fact that movie theaters only carry R, PG, PG-13, and G movies. However I know they are private businesses and I wouldn't want the governmenet telling me what products I had to stock on my shelves.
It's hard not to tell that the videogame retail industry is becoming more and more consolidated, and this means that chains like Gamestop are getting to be bigger and bigger targets. This means they will likely take Walmart-esque stances and pretty soon you will have to get your mature games from websites, which means lower sales and that of course means lower investment in adult-themed games.
Re:Bad Law - kills states remedies
on
Who Is An ISP?
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· Score: 1
You're missing the point. Let's say you don't want to do business in WA, you just want to do it in MA. You have all MA customers, but you still have to know, and abide by, WA law because someday a customer will move there or check their email from there and then they can sue you for spamming.
You're also confusing the issue by assuming there is a universal standard for spam. That's the main problem, that each state defines it slightly differently.
Re:Bad Law - kills states remedies
on
Who Is An ISP?
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· Score: 1
Consider that every state has a different law. Now put yourselves in the shoes of a totally legitimate company that wants to send email to its customers, or maybe even sponsor a legitimate newsletter. Today they have to evaluate each action against 50 laws because there is no way to tell which address would be subject to which laws (even asking the person won't work because they might lie). This means that one state is effectively making national law, which is a problem, and its the kind of situation (like other interstate commerce) that the federal government should address.
If you're having trouble envisioning legitimate marketers, just take whatever you do for a living in Washington, imagine if you had to abide by the laws passed in a very different state like Texas or Ohio, for no other reason than "just in case".
Reasonable is the word that keeps most lawyers in business. The law is not objective, and it should be fairly easy for you to realize that you aren't going to convince a judge that your $200 linux box and $50 cable modem that handles mail for 5 people is not an ISP any more than your kitchen is a restaurant. Now if its a registered business that considers internet access fees as a main source of revenue, it should be clear that it is an ISP. There is a middle ground, there is always a middle ground, and as someone mentioned, what that is will be determined in some respects by lawyers and judges.
I think the reason that only ISPs and businesses can sue is to prevent the courts from getting clogged up with people that want $500 for every spam they get. ISPs are going to vet the attacks and go after the worst offenders. If that has an effect on spam then the law was successful, if not they can always pass a new law.
Congress is, and should be, scared of passing a law that will sabotage an infrastructure they don't fully understand. I think the law is pretty weak, but I think it laid down some important principles and will prove to be a foundation for more specific and effective laws.
As expected here on slashdot, people think that because MSFT has an ISP and they were involved that this is somehow an insidious plot. Answer me this, how, in any possible way, does MSFT or AOL benefit from a weak spam law? How does any ISP or higher tier provider benefit? The groups that stand to benefit are spammers, anti-spam software vendors to some extent, and shady marketers. For the most part legit marketers gave up unsolicited email (AKA acquisition marketing) a while ago.
Re:Bad Law - kills states remedies
on
Who Is An ISP?
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· Score: 1
Actually I think a weak federal law is better than strong state laws. There are just way too many ways for spammers and plaintiffs to abuse the system by manipulating jurisdiction and things like that. Plus it makes it very difficult for legitimate companies to be sure that they are in the clear.
"That's why I have to laugh whenever I read stories speculating that Microsoft might do to Google what they did to Netscape."
IE beat Netscape not just because of its integration but because it was a far superior product. MSFT would have to come up with a search engine that gave better results than google to do this, which is alot harder than just integrating search (which is basically already in place anyways).
Actually, it kind of does do this in a kind of weak manner in Section 11:
"The Commission shall transmit to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce--a report, within 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act, that sets forth a plan for requiring commercial electronic mail to be identifiable from its subject line, by means of compliance with Internet Engineering Task Force Standards, the use of the characters `ADV' in the subject line, or other comparable identifier, or an explanation of any concerns the Commission has that cause the Commission to recommend against the plan."
That's pretty loose language, including the ability to say it shouldn't be done, but I doubt IETF is going to side with marketers here.
While the law doesn't specify a way to mark a message as spam, it does say:
"(2) PROHIBITION OF DECEPTIVE SUBJECT HEADINGS- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission to a protected computer of a commercial electronic mail message if such person has actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that a subject heading of the message would be likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message (consistent with the criteria are used in enforcement of section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 45))."
So if you were to write a negative test on "this is not an ad" in the subject line, any spam getting through would be breaking the law.
Not realistic, just an illustration that this bill isn't COMPLETELY useless. At least it makes forging headers explicitly illegal, that alone is a big step.
Keep in mind that ADV: is only needed on unsolicited mailings, not mailings to a legitimate customer list. If you company is sending mail to people that haven't done business with you before, then you guys are spamming and should probably find new marketing tactics soon.
Of course the ISPs would protect themselves, all they have to do is put in the TOS that they will be blocking ADV: mail, or most of them would just immediately score it as junk and put it in your junk mail folder.
I only scanned it, but it says that ISPs blocking practices aren't made illegal (which was the case in many other pro-spam bills). So your argument is moot after the first point, because what ISP isn't going to (or doesn't already) score anything with ADV: as spam? It's basically like having all "Resident" mail delivered to your trash barrel instead of your mailbox, which (if it was legal) would make anyone sending it think twice.
"...why would anyone think this is any different?"
Basically because it's a federal law. This means all of the issues of jurisdiction that the state laws face are gone. There are certainly lots of issues left, but having some sort of federal law is a big step IMO.
(I haven't read this particular law yet, since its 55 pages long)
That's so very 90's of you, why don't you step into the 21st century with iSurrender, or maybe a Bushist "surrendification", or maybe, if you're really cutting edge, a "initiating the peace phase of the conflict".
As mentioned in a few other posts, this could mean AT&T can go after spammers for patent infringment. Now this seems unlikely, but if I got only one spam a day and it was from AT&T and I knew that they had hordes of lawyers tracking down "infringers" I would not only switch to AT&T, I would print out the daily message and admire it during the time I've previously allotted to hitting "D" a few hundred times...
Even if you had an image that was 0% readable by OCR, image verification only stops "pure bot" spamming. It does not stop someone writing a helper or proxy app that presents them with a list of 1000 images that they type out in a very efficient manner. This could mean the difference between a million and a thousand spams per hour, but that's still a thousand spams per hour. And if you dismiss this as something that nobody would bother to do, you obviously don't know anything about spammers...
"On the other hand, the more platinum available, the lower the price gets."
That's only like 7.5 million pounds of platinum for each person on earth. I don't see how that could flood the market, I probably use that much in a week.
Not bingo, wrongo. People have no idea how effective branding campaigns are, even when they think they are aware. Even if you aren't looking to buy a pickup truck, and would never click on the banner, seeing GMC every day will have an effect on most people. Web sites aren't trying to rip off marketers, marketers are just finally getting used to how to effectively use the net as a medium.
My friend is a programmer, went to school for it, never broke a sweat at any job he's ever had, but he has this weird fixation with DeWalt tools, as if they are the pinnacle of quality. I bought a Makita drill and he asked me why I didn't buy a DeWalt. Now it takes about 2 seconds of using one to know that a Makita is far superior to a DeWalt, but given the fact that he never used either, some branding excercise at some point had a major influence on him and if he ever needed a power tool, you can bet he's going to buy a DeWalt.
People just need to chill when it comes to advertising. I would certainly like to see less of it, it sickens me to see billboards on the green monster at Fenway (yes I know they were there long ago), but it serves a function. I've found that people with excessive animosity towards advertising actually tend to be very brand conscious. Not to say they are fans of mainstream brands, but brands nonetheless, and all that means is they are being targetted by different marketers with different strategies.
Slashdot Mirror
While they are typically slow to react to such things, hoping they will simply go away, a $1000 per month connection is not enough to risk being blacklisted by AOL or Yahoo. Try keeping a customer when they realize they can't send mail to at least one of their friends and family.
The fact that they aren't afraid of losing their connection isn't due to the fact that ISPs don't care, its because there are so many ISPs to choose from and they just use new (possibly fake) names and businesses to open new accounts.
It's wrong and its false. I'm pretty unlikely to hire a fresh out of school programmer, because I don't want to be the one that has to show them that at least half of the stuff they busted ass to learn in school is totally useless. I'd much rather hire a hobbyist who has opinions and experiences they can bring to the table with them.
I would have a hard time putting someone away for 20 years. I would think that a 1 or 2 year sentence, a few thousand hours of community service and a 5-10 year period with a Mitnick-style computer ban would be severe enough and would fit the crime better.
I wonder how much time of other peoples lives a spammer wastes? Consider they send 100 million spams, not an unrealistic number for a major spammer. Each one takes, say 2 seconds to delete on average, thats about 6 years.
You are looking at this like it's a technology job where skill matters. A good programmer is 10 times more valuable than a bad one, a good laborer is probably 25-50% better than a bad one. No matter how good you are a plowing the street, you don't have alot of leverage in convincing them that you are worth more money than the guy waiting to take your job. That's why they have unions, for better or worse.
That's what they say, but this is the standard response to any technology that affects the way laborers work. This is like the Questec system that baseball umpires don't like. I have a feeling that this system is far more accurate than the "I reckon I plowed about 200 miles last night" method that is currently used.
Reduce the number of printers and the paper will go away. A company I worked for had 3 or 4 printers per hundred people, meaning they were usually inconvenient. Also all faxes were centralized and they were emailed to us. My paper consumption was probably 10-50 pages per week, which is effectively paperless IMO.
Also, when someone hands you a printout of a spreadsheet or document, look at it, thank them, throw it out and ask for an electronic version. It won't be long before they stop wasting time and paper. When someone said they took notes at a meeting, ask them to email you a copy, and they will feel strange since they did it on paper instead of a PDA or a tablet PC. Successful technology adoption is a pull strategy, not a push. You need to provide the solution and let people discover its value on their own.
Yeah, I have to say from repeated experience that if a telemarketer calls my cell phone I just say "this is my cell phone" and they have without fail apologized and immediately hung up. I presume they also remove me from the list because I only get them once per month or so, which I would say is manageable.
Again, you're missing the point. I'm not talking about the WA law, I'm talking about some other law that doesn't have the provision you mentioned, like the CA one. And I'm also not talking about just email, I'm talking about any situation where one state is effectively legislating for all the others. Do you contact the ISP of every email you send mail to?
I've noticed in your other comments that you like to swear, which I have no problem with, but what if some state that a viewer read those comments in said that you were violating their laws? After all it says at the bottom of the page that you own the post, therefore you are responsible for it? Have you checked every state law on the subject of obscene remarks (as well as how they define obscene)? Do not answer these questions, I'm merely trying to illustrate that state laws shouldn't legislate things that the state can't control, and that pretty much covers everything about the Internet. If they want to outlaw sending spam when the person is physically in the state, that's fine, but anything beyond that is too much. It's the same reason that the federal government regulates interstate commerce.
Movie ratings are only voluntary in theory, not in practice. When was the last time you saw an unrated movie at a major chain? Sure the indie theaters will show them but many towns don't even have those. If you want to make money on your movie, you have to rate it, no way around it. And you also need to have an R rating or "better", because the chains won't show NC-17.
Is this censorship? Sure. Do I think it's wrong? I'm really not sure, but I do know that saying its voluntary is stretching the truth. I wouldn't want my kids playing GTA. I'd like to be able to tell, without spending hours playing a game, that it's right for my children, so the warning labels and ratings do serve a valuable purpose. I don't like the fact that Walmart and other stores refuse to carry any CD with explicit lyrics, and I don't like the fact that movie theaters only carry R, PG, PG-13, and G movies. However I know they are private businesses and I wouldn't want the governmenet telling me what products I had to stock on my shelves.
It's hard not to tell that the videogame retail industry is becoming more and more consolidated, and this means that chains like Gamestop are getting to be bigger and bigger targets. This means they will likely take Walmart-esque stances and pretty soon you will have to get your mature games from websites, which means lower sales and that of course means lower investment in adult-themed games.
You're missing the point. Let's say you don't want to do business in WA, you just want to do it in MA. You have all MA customers, but you still have to know, and abide by, WA law because someday a customer will move there or check their email from there and then they can sue you for spamming.
You're also confusing the issue by assuming there is a universal standard for spam. That's the main problem, that each state defines it slightly differently.
Consider that every state has a different law. Now put yourselves in the shoes of a totally legitimate company that wants to send email to its customers, or maybe even sponsor a legitimate newsletter. Today they have to evaluate each action against 50 laws because there is no way to tell which address would be subject to which laws (even asking the person won't work because they might lie). This means that one state is effectively making national law, which is a problem, and its the kind of situation (like other interstate commerce) that the federal government should address.
If you're having trouble envisioning legitimate marketers, just take whatever you do for a living in Washington, imagine if you had to abide by the laws passed in a very different state like Texas or Ohio, for no other reason than "just in case".
Reasonable is the word that keeps most lawyers in business. The law is not objective, and it should be fairly easy for you to realize that you aren't going to convince a judge that your $200 linux box and $50 cable modem that handles mail for 5 people is not an ISP any more than your kitchen is a restaurant. Now if its a registered business that considers internet access fees as a main source of revenue, it should be clear that it is an ISP. There is a middle ground, there is always a middle ground, and as someone mentioned, what that is will be determined in some respects by lawyers and judges.
I think the reason that only ISPs and businesses can sue is to prevent the courts from getting clogged up with people that want $500 for every spam they get. ISPs are going to vet the attacks and go after the worst offenders. If that has an effect on spam then the law was successful, if not they can always pass a new law.
Congress is, and should be, scared of passing a law that will sabotage an infrastructure they don't fully understand. I think the law is pretty weak, but I think it laid down some important principles and will prove to be a foundation for more specific and effective laws.
As expected here on slashdot, people think that because MSFT has an ISP and they were involved that this is somehow an insidious plot. Answer me this, how, in any possible way, does MSFT or AOL benefit from a weak spam law? How does any ISP or higher tier provider benefit? The groups that stand to benefit are spammers, anti-spam software vendors to some extent, and shady marketers. For the most part legit marketers gave up unsolicited email (AKA acquisition marketing) a while ago.
Actually I think a weak federal law is better than strong state laws. There are just way too many ways for spammers and plaintiffs to abuse the system by manipulating jurisdiction and things like that. Plus it makes it very difficult for legitimate companies to be sure that they are in the clear.
"That's why I have to laugh whenever I read stories speculating that Microsoft might do to Google what they did to Netscape."
IE beat Netscape not just because of its integration but because it was a far superior product. MSFT would have to come up with a search engine that gave better results than google to do this, which is alot harder than just integrating search (which is basically already in place anyways).
Actually, it kind of does do this in a kind of weak manner in Section 11:
"The Commission shall transmit to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce--a report, within 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act, that sets forth a plan for requiring commercial electronic mail to be identifiable from its subject line, by means of compliance with Internet Engineering Task Force Standards, the use of the characters `ADV' in the subject line, or other comparable identifier, or an explanation of any concerns the Commission has that cause the Commission to recommend against the plan."
That's pretty loose language, including the ability to say it shouldn't be done, but I doubt IETF is going to side with marketers here.
While the law doesn't specify a way to mark a message as spam, it does say:
"(2) PROHIBITION OF DECEPTIVE SUBJECT HEADINGS- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission to a protected computer of a commercial electronic mail message if such person has actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that a subject heading of the message would be likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message (consistent with the criteria are used in enforcement of section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 45))."
So if you were to write a negative test on "this is not an ad" in the subject line, any spam getting through would be breaking the law.
Not realistic, just an illustration that this bill isn't COMPLETELY useless. At least it makes forging headers explicitly illegal, that alone is a big step.
Tons of value. It's called retention marketing. Don't you get catalogs and special offers from places you've bought stuff from?
Keep in mind that ADV: is only needed on unsolicited mailings, not mailings to a legitimate customer list. If you company is sending mail to people that haven't done business with you before, then you guys are spamming and should probably find new marketing tactics soon.
Of course the ISPs would protect themselves, all they have to do is put in the TOS that they will be blocking ADV: mail, or most of them would just immediately score it as junk and put it in your junk mail folder.
I only scanned it, but it says that ISPs blocking practices aren't made illegal (which was the case in many other pro-spam bills). So your argument is moot after the first point, because what ISP isn't going to (or doesn't already) score anything with ADV: as spam? It's basically like having all "Resident" mail delivered to your trash barrel instead of your mailbox, which (if it was legal) would make anyone sending it think twice.
"...why would anyone think this is any different?"
Basically because it's a federal law. This means all of the issues of jurisdiction that the state laws face are gone. There are certainly lots of issues left, but having some sort of federal law is a big step IMO.
(I haven't read this particular law yet, since its 55 pages long)
That's so very 90's of you, why don't you step into the 21st century with iSurrender, or maybe a Bushist "surrendification", or maybe, if you're really cutting edge, a "initiating the peace phase of the conflict".
As mentioned in a few other posts, this could mean AT&T can go after spammers for patent infringment. Now this seems unlikely, but if I got only one spam a day and it was from AT&T and I knew that they had hordes of lawyers tracking down "infringers" I would not only switch to AT&T, I would print out the daily message and admire it during the time I've previously allotted to hitting "D" a few hundred times...
Even if you had an image that was 0% readable by OCR, image verification only stops "pure bot" spamming. It does not stop someone writing a helper or proxy app that presents them with a list of 1000 images that they type out in a very efficient manner. This could mean the difference between a million and a thousand spams per hour, but that's still a thousand spams per hour. And if you dismiss this as something that nobody would bother to do, you obviously don't know anything about spammers...
"656,250,000,000,000 troy ounces"
"On the other hand, the more platinum available, the lower the price gets."
That's only like 7.5 million pounds of platinum for each person on earth. I don't see how that could flood the market, I probably use that much in a week.
Not bingo, wrongo. People have no idea how effective branding campaigns are, even when they think they are aware. Even if you aren't looking to buy a pickup truck, and would never click on the banner, seeing GMC every day will have an effect on most people. Web sites aren't trying to rip off marketers, marketers are just finally getting used to how to effectively use the net as a medium.
My friend is a programmer, went to school for it, never broke a sweat at any job he's ever had, but he has this weird fixation with DeWalt tools, as if they are the pinnacle of quality. I bought a Makita drill and he asked me why I didn't buy a DeWalt. Now it takes about 2 seconds of using one to know that a Makita is far superior to a DeWalt, but given the fact that he never used either, some branding excercise at some point had a major influence on him and if he ever needed a power tool, you can bet he's going to buy a DeWalt.
People just need to chill when it comes to advertising. I would certainly like to see less of it, it sickens me to see billboards on the green monster at Fenway (yes I know they were there long ago), but it serves a function. I've found that people with excessive animosity towards advertising actually tend to be very brand conscious. Not to say they are fans of mainstream brands, but brands nonetheless, and all that means is they are being targetted by different marketers with different strategies.