1) they have to prove you said they could mail you vs. you proving you said they can't.
This is different than your typical opt-out because there is only one list. It's easy to prove that you said they can't. You have your name on the master do-not-spam list. It's not like you have to opt out of every company. Just opt out once and be done with it.
2) if you have many mails (or a domain with an infinite amount via catch-alls) you can't list them all.
The bill doesn't seem to tell the FCC how to run the do-not-spam list. If I were you, I'd start recommending now that they allow wildcards (like *.mydomain.tld)
3) providing the e-mails that don't want to be mailed is a golden list for someone who wishes to violate the law anyway.
Good. Then my taxes go down the following year after the government has reaped billions of dollars from the violators. If the violators are out of the country, I'd fully expect our government to pressure their home country to do something about it.
Unless, of course, the spammer is outside jurisdiction... Like say, in Asia. One country cannot police a global resource without global cooperation without getting the military involved in an international incident.
This is true, but it seems to me that a large amount of the spam I get is ultimately marketing the wares of somebody here in this country, even if it is routed through a server in Asia. Because of this, we still have a target for enforcement.
I also suspect that if the laws seem to be effective for "companies" in the US employing this practice, pressure will be put on other countries to enact similar legislation. It would be horrible, but Internet connections CAN be turned off at the border. Most developing nations don't want that kind of isolation.
There are plenty of laws already on the books making 99.9% of spam illegal, but the problem is the government and related law enforcement agencies do not enforce the existing laws so why would anyone think this is any different?
I would expect that this new law will close many of the loopholes that other laws leave. That will make it much more difficult for someone accused of a criminal offense by spamming to win the court battle that follows.
If anyone wants to hear that in English, it sounds like they're saying that the MPAA- and RIAA- bots don't count as SPAM.
They do if the the intended recipient of the mail is not, indeed, using said protected material unlawfully. Hmmmmmm. This could be VERY interesting the next time they make a mistake on the identity of the alleged pirate.
Consider the fact that radio stations broadcast this stuff nonstop all day long.
It's not the same thing and you know it. Some radio stations get paid to do this. Others have to pay license fees. Regardless, it's advertising because the listeners are likely to buy. Those downloading music are much less likely to buy what they've downloaded. The quality of downloaded music is much higher than what can be taped off the radio.
Disclaimer: I don't agree with going after a 15 year old, but...
I don't really know what the punishment should be for downloading and sharing 1100 songs. But I believe that 3500 is at the high ends of reasonable, maybe at the low ends of too high.
If you do the math, that's $3.19 per song. Too steep you say? Consider the fact that they are going after her because she was SHARING these with others. What if they charged her not for every song she had in her public area, but for every DOWNLOAD of every song? I think the number could get pretty high. So no, I don't think $3500 is all that unreasonable.
Now, like many I think there are better ways of handling this. It would be better if the RIAA contacted her parents and notified them of the behavior, and then backed that up with a threat to sue at some less-than-trival fee (probably even higher than $3500) if the activity didn't stop immediately.
The way he worded his response can easily be misconstrued to mean that he thinks he created it. A very poor choice of words.
But it's absurd to suggest that he was trying to make people think that he, a politician, created the world's most significant network. That was clearly not his intention.
To be honest with you, I wouldn't put anything past a politician. While it's most likely that his wording was just poor, it's not entirely impossible that he had some hope that some of the less educated people out there might actually believe he created the thing and think he was the most brilliant man alive. A bit far-fetched perhaps, though. In his defense, if you look at his exact wording, it appears he was having a bit of trouble coming up with proper phrasing.
And Vint Cerf, who with Jon Postel can be genuinely described as one of the co-inventors of the Internet, certainly disagrees with the "He said he invented it" spin on the subject.
Although Vint was certainly one of the REAL figures behind the creation of the internet, his opinion on this matter is really irrelevant. What matters much more is public opinion.
I think Gore is being unfairly maligned here.
If he weren't a politician, I'd agree with you. But in the race of politics, Democrats are always looking for something to harp on Republicans about, and Republicans are always looking for something to pin on Democrats. Both of the Bush presidents get nailed for not being able to coherently express their thoughts. Clinton, probably one of the most eloquent of our Presidents, will always be remembered for "I didn't inhale" and his rather entertaining responses to questions in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Why should Al be exempt from all this?
Isn't that more embarrassing than having an AOL account?
I agree with you, but I use the hotmail account for poetic justice. From whence much spam and viruses come, there shall they go.:-) Besides, I needed an account that I could throw away if it got spammed to death. I'm open to any other suggestions.:-)
Lovely. Yet another attempt to bash Gore over a statement he never made. Gore said that he is the father of the Internet, from the perspective that it was his bills that gave DARPA the funding it needed to create the Internet.
BLITZER:...Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What have you to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?
GORE:...During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Now granted, he doesn't claim to have INVENTED the internet. Instead, he claims to have CREATED it. What he REALLY did in 1986 was articulate somebody elses vision of widespread connected computing, and he introduced a follow-up bill to facilitate more widespread access to the network. I don't want to take away from his accomplishments because they ARE significant, but claiming to have created the internet alludes to illusions of grandeur. So yes, Al deserves to pretty much be mocked for the rest of his career over that statement.
I think most people agree that, historically speaking, the Internet evolved as a result of the work done during the early 1970's on the ARPANET project, where TCP/IP was developed. The WWW concept, which makes the Internet much more useful, was developed primarily by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN.
The linked picture is of a rendering not the actual device. Is this thing vapor ware?
Read the article. They have a picture of the real thing in somebody's hand there. Also, did anybody notice how suspiciously like one of Leonardo Divinci's drawings this thing is?
Of course, I take offense when someone says that all vegetarians are unrealistic psychos...
Agreed. And since some people can't tolerate the thought of eating something that was once living and breathing, it makes sense that the thought of killing them would make them uncomfortable. Actually, a good chunk of the animal rights activists aren't even vegetarian at all. They don't mind eating a good steak, but can't fathom the thought of shooting Bambi.
Leather car seats, leather shoes...
You know what would be cool? Some sort of certification that promises the animals used for the leather were also used for food. That way, you can at least be sure the animal wasn't killed just for its pelt, and that it would have been killed regardless of whether you had ordered leather seats for your new car. Still, I'd imagine that most vegetarians would be uncomfortable regardless.
(like the pie I ate a week ago used lard for the shell, yuck)
If you aren't a vegetarian, this isn't nearly as yucky as you might think. The qualities of lard make it suited for certain types of cooking in a way that just can't be matched by any replacement. Pie crusts made with lard are exceptionally elastic when being formed and flake perfectly after baking. Potato chips cooked in lard are much crisper than those cooked in vegetable oil or shortening. And at least you can be reasonably certain that the rest of the animal was also consumed for food. Of course, eating something cooked in a substance that is also used to make candles and soap is a bit daunting...
I take it you've never had to deal with having your property overrun with rabbits, prarie dogs, rats, or other vermin.
Many of the animal rights activists don't seem to want to think very hard. They are instinctively opposed to shooting any animal for pretty much any reason, but don't even take a second to consider how their big new houses that they all want are destroying the animal habitat around them and therefore starving the animals to death instead. You can see the results around here with the deer population wandering aimlessly looking for food. Most of them should be nearly twice the size they are right now.
Personally, I don't agree with shooting animals just for sport, and I won't shoot anything I don't plan to eat. I'd probably make exceptions to these rules if vermin were threatening the property I depended on for my living, though.
"Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."
There's a lesson for us all, there.
Before we wander off into knee-jerk madness, let me remove the contextual spin from this. The actual quote is below.
Part of the reason Windows Messenger pop-ups caught the attention of the FTC is that one of the agency's commissioners received one of the advertisements at home, Beales said. But the FTC also received numerous complaints from consumers.
I take this to mean that having a PERSONAL experience helped to raise the priority. I would be shocked to find out that a personal experience by one of the commissioners isn't worth at least thousand complaints from the user community. I can't think of one organization where this rule does not apply. Had the commissioner not encountered this personally, I think the priority would have still been raised with enough user complaints.
...is it cheaper for MS to pay 250K to jail each person that writes a virus exploiting on of their security holes than it is to pay the developers to avoid creating them in the first place?
I'm sure somebody has already asked this, but I want to know if there's going to be a bounty for capturing the Microsoft employees responsible for letting these vulnerabilities get through development, testing and into their shipped product. Not that I want to diminish the reponsibility of the virus writers, but let's give credit where credit is due.
Maybe they (clarification for the clueless: "they" is a reference to the ISP Telia) should have blocked the ones sending out SPAM, instead of everybody!
I hate to tell you doc, but based on context, the reference to "they" could have easily been interpreted as AOL -- even if Telia makes more sense. The followup response about the ISP not being innocent was in reference to Telia with the assumption that your previous reference to "they" meant AOL.
Yeah, I know. My response was partly tongue-in-cheek -- a feeble attempt at humor, plus it was an opportunity to state the impact RedHat's decision has on MY decisions. For what it's worth, I was a paying customer until the end of last year. I didn't pay for updates this year because I was anticipating the upgrade to 9.X -- instead I was patching 7.1 with the "slow" update process as needed. If I had upgraded to 9.X, I would have purchased another 2 years worth of support.
Just out of curiosity, which distribution are you using and are you happy with it?
Who do I know that uses Redhat? No one, really, except maybe a couple of people who have dualboots and claim that "the computer is running linux version 9!
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm running RedHat 7.1 on the server for my small business, and I even know that I'm not running version "7.1" of Linux. Although I must confess that I can't remember which kernel I last installed...either 2.2.X or 2.4.X. I was considering purchasing one of the 9.X versions of RedHat, but I've been teetering on the fence between that and Mandrake. I'd like to give special thanks to RedHat for helping me to make the decision.
...gave them every last dime of his cash over a period of years...
This doesn't sound right to me. I could understand a one-time outlay of every last dime, but to slowly lose it to these scams over several years? I don't buy that one. That goes well beyond being clueless and gullible. "I know the last 6 times I've tried this I've been shafted, but this one's number 7 and it's got to be lucky..."
That would make the vigilantes and would then make what they did illegal. Not only would they have to work on hunting down perpretrators, but they'd always have to watch their backside because the government of several countries would be after them. Still, it sounds like fun....
Are there really that many.biz domains used for spamming? One of my more used email address is a.biz address and I wouldn't want people blocking my email. Yikes!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, technically, but....
1) they have to prove you said they could mail you vs. you proving you said they can't.
This is different than your typical opt-out because there is only one list. It's easy to prove that you said they can't. You have your name on the master do-not-spam list. It's not like you have to opt out of every company. Just opt out once and be done with it.
2) if you have many mails (or a domain with an infinite amount via catch-alls) you can't list them all.
The bill doesn't seem to tell the FCC how to run the do-not-spam list. If I were you, I'd start recommending now that they allow wildcards (like *.mydomain.tld)
3) providing the e-mails that don't want to be mailed is a golden list for someone who wishes to violate the law anyway.
Good. Then my taxes go down the following year after the government has reaped billions of dollars from the violators. If the violators are out of the country, I'd fully expect our government to pressure their home country to do something about it.
This is true, but it seems to me that a large amount of the spam I get is ultimately marketing the wares of somebody here in this country, even if it is routed through a server in Asia. Because of this, we still have a target for enforcement.
I also suspect that if the laws seem to be effective for "companies" in the US employing this practice, pressure will be put on other countries to enact similar legislation. It would be horrible, but Internet connections CAN be turned off at the border. Most developing nations don't want that kind of isolation.
I think the DO-NOT-SPAM registry pretty much takes care of that.
2. No jail time only monetary damages
Not true. Senders of fraudulent SPAM are subject to five years in prison.
3. No public stonings
OK well, I guess we'll all have to make a compromise here. Maybe we can get them to introduce public stonings for repeat offenders?
I would expect that this new law will close many of the loopholes that other laws leave. That will make it much more difficult for someone accused of a criminal offense by spamming to win the court battle that follows.
Yeah, but what's worse is that at least one of the moderators made the same mistake. :-)
They do if the the intended recipient of the mail is not, indeed, using said protected material unlawfully. Hmmmmmm. This could be VERY interesting the next time they make a mistake on the identity of the alleged pirate.
It's not the same thing and you know it. Some radio stations get paid to do this. Others have to pay license fees. Regardless, it's advertising because the listeners are likely to buy. Those downloading music are much less likely to buy what they've downloaded. The quality of downloaded music is much higher than what can be taped off the radio.
Now, like many I think there are better ways of handling this. It would be better if the RIAA contacted her parents and notified them of the behavior, and then backed that up with a threat to sue at some less-than-trival fee (probably even higher than $3500) if the activity didn't stop immediately.
The way he worded his response can easily be misconstrued to mean that he thinks he created it. A very poor choice of words.
But it's absurd to suggest that he was trying to make people think that he, a politician, created the world's most significant network. That was clearly not his intention.
To be honest with you, I wouldn't put anything past a politician. While it's most likely that his wording was just poor, it's not entirely impossible that he had some hope that some of the less educated people out there might actually believe he created the thing and think he was the most brilliant man alive. A bit far-fetched perhaps, though. In his defense, if you look at his exact wording, it appears he was having a bit of trouble coming up with proper phrasing.
And Vint Cerf, who with Jon Postel can be genuinely described as one of the co-inventors of the Internet, certainly disagrees with the "He said he invented it" spin on the subject.
Although Vint was certainly one of the REAL figures behind the creation of the internet, his opinion on this matter is really irrelevant. What matters much more is public opinion.
I think Gore is being unfairly maligned here.
If he weren't a politician, I'd agree with you. But in the race of politics, Democrats are always looking for something to harp on Republicans about, and Republicans are always looking for something to pin on Democrats. Both of the Bush presidents get nailed for not being able to coherently express their thoughts. Clinton, probably one of the most eloquent of our Presidents, will always be remembered for "I didn't inhale" and his rather entertaining responses to questions in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Why should Al be exempt from all this?
I agree with you, but I use the hotmail account for poetic justice. From whence much spam and viruses come, there shall they go.
Well, the transcript doesn't lie...
CNN "Late Edition" Transcript:
Now granted, he doesn't claim to have INVENTED the internet. Instead, he claims to have CREATED it. What he REALLY did in 1986 was articulate somebody elses vision of widespread connected computing, and he introduced a follow-up bill to facilitate more widespread access to the network. I don't want to take away from his accomplishments because they ARE significant, but claiming to have created the internet alludes to illusions of grandeur. So yes, Al deserves to pretty much be mocked for the rest of his career over that statement.I think most people agree that, historically speaking, the Internet evolved as a result of the work done during the early 1970's on the ARPANET project, where TCP/IP was developed. The WWW concept, which makes the Internet much more useful, was developed primarily by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN.
Read the article. They have a picture of the real thing in somebody's hand there. Also, did anybody notice how suspiciously like one of Leonardo Divinci's drawings this thing is?
No, the public will more likely fall all over themselves to get off the internet.
Agreed. And since some people can't tolerate the thought of eating something that was once living and breathing, it makes sense that the thought of killing them would make them uncomfortable. Actually, a good chunk of the animal rights activists aren't even vegetarian at all. They don't mind eating a good steak, but can't fathom the thought of shooting Bambi.
Leather car seats, leather shoes...
You know what would be cool? Some sort of certification that promises the animals used for the leather were also used for food. That way, you can at least be sure the animal wasn't killed just for its pelt, and that it would have been killed regardless of whether you had ordered leather seats for your new car. Still, I'd imagine that most vegetarians would be uncomfortable regardless.
(like the pie I ate a week ago used lard for the shell, yuck)
If you aren't a vegetarian, this isn't nearly as yucky as you might think. The qualities of lard make it suited for certain types of cooking in a way that just can't be matched by any replacement. Pie crusts made with lard are exceptionally elastic when being formed and flake perfectly after baking. Potato chips cooked in lard are much crisper than those cooked in vegetable oil or shortening. And at least you can be reasonably certain that the rest of the animal was also consumed for food. Of course, eating something cooked in a substance that is also used to make candles and soap is a bit daunting...
Many of the animal rights activists don't seem to want to think very hard. They are instinctively opposed to shooting any animal for pretty much any reason, but don't even take a second to consider how their big new houses that they all want are destroying the animal habitat around them and therefore starving the animals to death instead. You can see the results around here with the deer population wandering aimlessly looking for food. Most of them should be nearly twice the size they are right now.
Personally, I don't agree with shooting animals just for sport, and I won't shoot anything I don't plan to eat. I'd probably make exceptions to these rules if vermin were threatening the property I depended on for my living, though.
There's a lesson for us all, there.
Before we wander off into knee-jerk madness, let me remove the contextual spin from this. The actual quote is below.
I take this to mean that having a PERSONAL experience helped to raise the priority. I would be shocked to find out that a personal experience by one of the commissioners isn't worth at least thousand complaints from the user community. I can't think of one organization where this rule does not apply. Had the commissioner not encountered this personally, I think the priority would have still been raised with enough user complaints.Microsoft Outlook: The IDE for virus development.
I'm sure somebody has already asked this, but I want to know if there's going to be a bounty for capturing the Microsoft employees responsible for letting these vulnerabilities get through development, testing and into their shipped product. Not that I want to diminish the reponsibility of the virus writers, but let's give credit where credit is due.
I hate to tell you doc, but based on context, the reference to "they" could have easily been interpreted as AOL -- even if Telia makes more sense. The followup response about the ISP not being innocent was in reference to Telia with the assumption that your previous reference to "they" meant AOL.
Yeah, I know. My response was partly tongue-in-cheek -- a feeble attempt at humor, plus it was an opportunity to state the impact RedHat's decision has on MY decisions. For what it's worth, I was a paying customer until the end of last year. I didn't pay for updates this year because I was anticipating the upgrade to 9.X -- instead I was patching 7.1 with the "slow" update process as needed. If I had upgraded to 9.X, I would have purchased another 2 years worth of support.
Just out of curiosity, which distribution are you using and are you happy with it?
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm running RedHat 7.1 on the server for my small business, and I even know that I'm not running version "7.1" of Linux. Although I must confess that I can't remember which kernel I last installed...either 2.2.X or 2.4.X. I was considering purchasing one of the 9.X versions of RedHat, but I've been teetering on the fence between that and Mandrake. I'd like to give special thanks to RedHat for helping me to make the decision.
This doesn't sound right to me. I could understand a one-time outlay of every last dime, but to slowly lose it to these scams over several years? I don't buy that one. That goes well beyond being clueless and gullible. "I know the last 6 times I've tried this I've been shafted, but this one's number 7 and it's got to be lucky..."
That would make the vigilantes and would then make what they did illegal. Not only would they have to work on hunting down perpretrators, but they'd always have to watch their backside because the government of several countries would be after them. Still, it sounds like fun....
Are there really that many .biz domains used for spamming? One of my more used email address is a .biz address and I wouldn't want people blocking my email. Yikes!
Yeah, like 700 pizzas for the students working on the project.