it is a good idea to turn about and say "If this was implemented and I were a spammer, what would I do?"
Well, if I were a spammer and I had to produce a digital signature for each of eleventy zillion messages that had been sufficiently munged to disguise the fact that they were all essentially identical, I'd hijack other people's computers because I couldn't afford to buy enough CPU time to do it myself.
By an amazing coincidence, if I were a spammer and I had to attach monetary postage to each of eleventy zillion messages, I'd (all together now) hijack other people's computers because I couldn't afford to buy enough postage for my own account.
Again, we are brought back to the same bottom line -- either you can pin spammers down enough to make them follow the rules (in which case there is no need for any rule other than "don't spam"), or you can't (in which case an "e-mail postage" system won't stop them). In either case, it simply makes no sense to adopt a rule that extends to legitimate users.
If you don't give a spammer the chance to remove your name then you have no right to publish a block list saying they are a spammer.
Nonsense. I have every right to say "So-and-So is a spammer". So-and-So might sue for defamation, but truth is an absolute defense against such a charge (at least in the US).
The problem is we need MORE RESOURCES dedicated towards law enforcement so they are equipped to enforce laws that are already on the books which are not being enforced.
Indeed. There are already computer-cracking laws that cover the spammers' use of zombie networks. With a bit of tweaking, the computer intrusion laws could be extended to cover the spammers' entire arsenal of filter-evasion tricks. That would suffice to end the problem -- spammers who wanted to stay legal would find their defecations easily and reliably dropped into the bit bucket, unseen by human eyes.
And that's not even getting to the illegal content (financial scams, medical fraud, illegal offers, distribution of pornography to minors) found in 99%+ of spam.
Enforcing the rule "You may not spam" is a totally separate issue.
WTF? It could be done using exactly the same system you outlined -- just replace "I certify that somebody has paid me to send this e-mail" with "I certify that this sender has not requested an unreasonably large number of signatures from me". (Note: If you can send eleventeen jillion e-mails using one signature, your proposed system won't impede spam, so I am assuming that you need one signature per recipeint or at most per small group of recipients.)
Obviously, a spammer could stretch the limits a bit by getting a few signatures here, a few more there, etc, like a drug-seeking patient visiting multiple doctors -- but that just doesn't scale to anywhere near the dimensions of spam as we know it.
I mean really, would anyone care that much about spam if we stopped getting it from penis pill pushers, vicodin pushers, Nigerian businessmen, and those women who are really horny?
Yes, because spam, regardless of content, impedes access to my legitimate e-mail.
(Diclaimer: I am talking about US law in particular, though most Western nations have similar laws with a few differences in detail.)
A generic statement of that sort is clearly a mere statement of opinion (i.e. "spammers should be killed").
A more specific statement (e.g. "Scott Richter should be killed") might or might not be a murder threat, depending on the context. For instance, the statement in the previous statement is not a threat (it is obviously a statement framed as a hypothetical example). To take another example, a rhetorical statement such as "Scott Richter should have the Stars and Stripes branded on one cheek, the Star of David branded on the other cheek, and then be airdropped into the Northwest Provinces of Pakistan" is clearly just that -- rhetoric.
However, if someone yelled such a statememt to a mob assembled outside Scott Richter's house, it probably would be a legally actionable threat (since a reasonable person would perceive a likelihood that the mob might actually act on the statement).
Imagine that you sold furniture, and I went to all of your wood suppliers and told them that you were operating illegally and they should stop providing you with wood, but never told you that they were unhappy with your nor give you a chance to fix the situation.
Irrelevant analogy. Richter already knows that he is a pariah, and knows exactly what he must do (stop spamming) to fix the situation. He simply needs to be sufficiently pressured to do so (which will probably require getting him kicked off ISP after ISP until he can no longer find a host).
They're interfering with businesses, and they're blocking communications.
They are doing no such thing. They are informing the rest of the world "So-and-so is a spammer". The rest of the world rejects messages from so-and-so, or not, as it chooses.
I am honestly surprised that we haven't heard of some spammer being beaten to a pulp, or worse -- when you annoy millions of people every day, sooner or later one of them is going to snap....
I don't believe there's any way you could restrain my right of free speech to inform the ISP that his client is in breach of his contract.
The contract is irrelevant to that question. It's clearly free speech for my to inform an ISP that one of their clients is spamming -- they may or may not do anything about it, but it's free speech in either case (so long as it's not done in a way that constitutes harassment in itself, and so long as it is the truth rather than a defamation).
How does nonsense like this get modded up as "Insightful"?
There are two possible rules: "You must pay to send e-mail" or "You may not spam". If you can enforce the former, you can enforce the latter. If you cannot enforce the latter, you also cannot enforce the former. Thus, if you're going to make a rule, it ought to be the latter (which impacts only abusers) rather than the former (which impacts everybody).
Joking aside, the filter-cracking gibberish routinely inserted into spam would be a great traffic-analysis-immune communications channel for terrorists....
he has contacts with some interestingly acronymed agencies, if you get my drift
This invites entertaining speculation:
The CIA (setting up a deep cover so that if the local al-Qaeda cell figures out that they're under surveillance, planted clues will lead to Richter instead of the real agent)?
The FBI (disrupting Mob finances in such a way that the family boss will think it's Richter skimming off the money)?
Calling a number to harass the company and its employees is illegal, immoral and cannot be justified.
How on earth can it be illegal, immoral, or unjustified to call a company that explicitly invited your call by sending the junk fax and explicitly including contact information? They really did initiate a "business relationship" -- you have a much more solid right to call them back than they did to fax you in the first place.
At most, one could make a case that it would be harassment to repeatedly reply to the same message.
Reminds me of the v|@gr4 spammers. Why do they keep adding typos into their messages? Because people are filtering out messages containing those words. Why are people filtering out those words? Because they don't want to listen to these spammers? Why are these spamming companies trying to thwart the filter? Beats me.
Why doesn't the government arrest them for bypassing security in order to gain unauthorized access to your computer? Because the government hasn't had its feet held to the fire and made to do its one legitimate job (defense of persons and property).
If I can buy it with my choice of video card, ethernet card, etc, I might buy this.
The first quick touchstone: Are they going to admit that the only two sensible choices are 1)dual-format DVD burner or 2)don't bother with a DVD burner at all?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if I were a spammer and I had to produce a digital signature for each of eleventy zillion messages that had been sufficiently munged to disguise the fact that they were all essentially identical, I'd hijack other people's computers because I couldn't afford to buy enough CPU time to do it myself.
By an amazing coincidence, if I were a spammer and I had to attach monetary postage to each of eleventy zillion messages, I'd (all together now) hijack other people's computers because I couldn't afford to buy enough postage for my own account.
Again, we are brought back to the same bottom line -- either you can pin spammers down enough to make them follow the rules (in which case there is no need for any rule other than "don't spam"), or you can't (in which case an "e-mail postage" system won't stop them). In either case, it simply makes no sense to adopt a rule that extends to legitimate users.
Nope; in this case it's trivial (when fifty people all want to send the same "v1agr@" ad, they ain't fifty people).
Nonsense. I have every right to say "So-and-So is a spammer". So-and-So might sue for defamation, but truth is an absolute defense against such a charge (at least in the US).
Aw, geez, now you've gone and given them the idea....
Indeed. There are already computer-cracking laws that cover the spammers' use of zombie networks. With a bit of tweaking, the computer intrusion laws could be extended to cover the spammers' entire arsenal of filter-evasion tricks. That would suffice to end the problem -- spammers who wanted to stay legal would find their defecations easily and reliably dropped into the bit bucket, unseen by human eyes.
And that's not even getting to the illegal content (financial scams, medical fraud, illegal offers, distribution of pornography to minors) found in 99%+ of spam.
WTF? It could be done using exactly the same system you outlined -- just replace "I certify that somebody has paid me to send this e-mail" with "I certify that this sender has not requested an unreasonably large number of signatures from me". (Note: If you can send eleventeen jillion e-mails using one signature, your proposed system won't impede spam, so I am assuming that you need one signature per recipeint or at most per small group of recipients.)
Obviously, a spammer could stretch the limits a bit by getting a few signatures here, a few more there, etc, like a drug-seeking patient visiting multiple doctors -- but that just doesn't scale to anywhere near the dimensions of spam as we know it.
Yes, because spam, regardless of content, impedes access to my legitimate e-mail.
(Diclaimer: I am talking about US law in particular, though most Western nations have similar laws with a few differences in detail.)
A generic statement of that sort is clearly a mere statement of opinion (i.e. "spammers should be killed").
A more specific statement (e.g. "Scott Richter should be killed") might or might not be a murder threat, depending on the context. For instance, the statement in the previous statement is not a threat (it is obviously a statement framed as a hypothetical example). To take another example, a rhetorical statement such as "Scott Richter should have the Stars and Stripes branded on one cheek, the Star of David branded on the other cheek, and then be airdropped into the Northwest Provinces of Pakistan" is clearly just that -- rhetoric.
However, if someone yelled such a statememt to a mob assembled outside Scott Richter's house, it probably would be a legally actionable threat (since a reasonable person would perceive a likelihood that the mob might actually act on the statement).
Irrelevant analogy. Richter already knows that he is a pariah, and knows exactly what he must do (stop spamming) to fix the situation. He simply needs to be sufficiently pressured to do so (which will probably require getting him kicked off ISP after ISP until he can no longer find a host).
They are doing no such thing. They are informing the rest of the world "So-and-so is a spammer". The rest of the world rejects messages from so-and-so, or not, as it chooses.
I am honestly surprised that we haven't heard of some spammer being beaten to a pulp, or worse -- when you annoy millions of people every day, sooner or later one of them is going to snap....
The contract is irrelevant to that question. It's clearly free speech for my to inform an ISP that one of their clients is spamming -- they may or may not do anything about it, but it's free speech in either case (so long as it's not done in a way that constitutes harassment in itself, and so long as it is the truth rather than a defamation).
There are two possible rules: "You must pay to send e-mail" or "You may not spam". If you can enforce the former, you can enforce the latter. If you cannot enforce the latter, you also cannot enforce the former. Thus, if you're going to make a rule, it ought to be the latter (which impacts only abusers) rather than the former (which impacts everybody).
Joking aside, the filter-cracking gibberish routinely inserted into spam would be a great traffic-analysis-immune communications channel for terrorists....
This invites entertaining speculation:
The CIA (setting up a deep cover so that if the local al-Qaeda cell figures out that they're under surveillance, planted clues will lead to Richter instead of the real agent)?
The FBI (disrupting Mob finances in such a way that the family boss will think it's Richter skimming off the money)?
Nice try at weaseling. The evidence that Bush did have of Saudi sponsorship of al-Qaeda counts, too.
How on earth can it be illegal, immoral, or unjustified to call a company that explicitly invited your call by sending the junk fax and explicitly including contact information? They really did initiate a "business relationship" -- you have a much more solid right to call them back than they did to fax you in the first place.
At most, one could make a case that it would be harassment to repeatedly reply to the same message.
Why do I have this mental image of an adolescent boy buying condoms for "a friend"?
I trust that they at least got the word to let Prince Albert out of the can before he suffocated.
Why doesn't the government arrest them for bypassing security in order to gain unauthorized access to your computer? Because the government hasn't had its feet held to the fire and made to do its one legitimate job (defense of persons and property).
A pay phone fifteen miles away from my house gives them my home phone number?
The first quick touchstone: Are they going to admit that the only two sensible choices are 1)dual-format DVD burner or 2)don't bother with a DVD burner at all?
They've already kept steps to keep this dangerous terrorist from getting his hands on a handbook for computer crime.
Haven't been on this "Internet" thing for very long, have you?
Well, yes, mutually exclusive assertions are necessarily different from one another.