The Jeep had a ton of pepsi stickers all over it and the contract he signed required that he could not sell it or remove any of the stickers for one year.
I'd have no use for a Jeep as such, and would want to sell it with minimum mileage. So, they could either waive that "one year" clause, or I could keep it in my garage, stickers unseen by human eyes, for a year -- their choice.
Richter claims that because the complaints fail to identify the original email sender, Optin cannot comply with the CAN-SPAM ACT, which requires the sender of an email to remove the address of any person who does not desire to receive any further email.
Of course he can comply with the law. All he has to do is stop spamming.
Spamcop is under no obligation to make it easy for him, just possible.
You're telling me that someone should get a year or two of their life taken away for spamming?
Yes, because each spammer takes about that much from his victims, when you do the math.
Time wasted? What time wasted? There are DECENT (and free) spam filters built into Thunderbird. There are utilities like SpamAssassin.
Yes -- and if circumventing SpamAssassin got you the same jail time as circumventing any other computer security system, the problem would go away. It wouldn't even be necessary to make spam illegal in and of itself -- spammers would have a choice of not using antifilter techniques and being trivially blocked, or continuing to sell "v1a*gr@" and going to jail.
Look, I get a few hundred spam a day....
If you don't care about such things, you have the option of not complaining to the police when you get spammed, or your stereo gets boosted, or whatever. The rest of us who do insist on protecting our private property rights will agree to disagree, so long as you do not actually prevent the police and courts from doing their jobs.
I said that the major corporations would begin spamming once the sleaziest stuff was basically quashed -- once their spam would not be "associated with the Internet porn and snake-oil spams."
Such a strategy might have worked a decade agim byt it's simply too late for that now. The associations "spam=scam" and "spam=porn" have become indelible.
no the simple threat of prosecution really doesn't stop me from stealing stuff. What stops me is my conscious and morals which tell me that taking stuff that doesn't belong to me is wrong
Well, good for you.
When dealing with spammers, who are sociopaths for whom the word "conscience" means "a mysterious thing other people have that I might be able to exploit somehow", other techniques are required.
"No one's done this before," Feinberg said. "It will be fun -- not for my client but for me professionally."
Here's hoping that he sees this as his big chance to try the "insult the judge to his face every fifteen seconds" strategy he daydreamed about in law school.
Put aside the bleeding heart prejudice against cruel and unusual punishments.
Joking aside, the prohibition against "cruel and unusual" punishments simply means that the punishment must be in proportion to the crime according to generally accepted standards of criminal justice. If one adds up the amount of time and money wasted as a direct result of a single spam run, one can make a case that the punishment for spamming ought to be similar to that for kidnapping someone for several weeks and cleaning out his bank account (the only difference is that the damage in the former case is spread among more people).
And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely.
Nope. It doesn't matter if he relays his computer crimes through the Spirit Rover commlink -- if he's phyically in the US and the Feds have the evidence, he can be arrested and charged.
Bottom line: If the Feds are serious about enforcing the law (which is the real rub), a spammer needs to physically get his ass out of the US, unless he doesn't mind having said ass traded back and forth for ciggies.
Did Bill Clinton teach you how to redefine ordinary English words, or did you teach him?
Of course a filter is an access control mechanism -- denying access to some and granting it to others is its entire function.
A filter is not an access control mechanism and bypassing it is no different to bypassing a door-man at a club by actually dressing well.
Nope; the filter-cracking techniques of spammers are instead equivalent to bypassing a door-man by wearing a forged badge that makes you appear to be a legitimate visitor when you aren't.
Unauthorised access means you or something you can control or pre-program can interact with a system or place.
No, unauthorized access means access that is not authorized by the owner of the property. For example, if I put up a spam filter to keep out the spam you send and you use some trick to get it into my inbox anyway, then you have gained [drum roll] unauthorized access.
Nonsense. A spam filter is erected to keep out spam (duh). If a spammer deliberately circumvents it to get spam in, then he's gained unauthorized access.
you cannot gain any information from someones computer just by sending an email
Irrelevant. Entering private property without permission (in this case, against an express prohibition) is trespassing whether or not you deliberately remove anything you find there (if you do, you commit an additional crime of theft, but it's a separate issue).
you cannot damage a computer by sending an email
Also irrelevant. Repeat above paragraph, replacing "remove" with "damage" and "theft" with "vandalism".
The only unathorised thing you could do is flood one system with emails and that would count as a DoS attack.
More and more irrelevant. Trespassing is trespassing whether you do it once or ten thousand times.
Spammers may be a sub-species of basterds and dont get me wrong i'd have fun capping them all, but you cant make being a basterd illigal on its own!
No, you can't make it illegal to be a bastard. You can, and all civilized societies do, make it illegal to intrude on other people's property after you have been put on notice that you aren't welcome (and the use of any filter-evasion technique is prima facie evidence that the spammer is wilfully doing just that).
how ever hard you try and stop it by giving a computer the task of filtering mail someone will find a way around that
Well, there's the proper point of attack for the law. We throw people in jail for cracking other forms of computer security in order to gain unauthorized access to other people's systems; we need to enforce the same laws against this subspecies of cracking.
Let's take the politics out of it and work towards a FAIR technological solution.
A perfectly fair technological solution has already been offered -- place steel bars between the spammer and the outside world where the computers are. Duh.
If it's so impossible to stop people from buying from spammers or fences, what makes you think we can stop spam or burglary? The best we can do is to minimize it
The most effective way to minimize it is [drum roll] to make it known that if you get caught doing it you will go to jail. Duh.
The fact is that spamming is profitable for only one reason. Because people buy from spammers.It IS that simple, and the ONLY fair social solution is to get people to stop buying.
On second thought, never mind that earlier invitation to a serious discussion. Arguing with someone who (as an inescapable corrolary) thinks that the solution to burglary is to convince everyone not to buy from fences is an exersize in futility.
I have absolutely NO sympathy for people who think jail is the answer for everything.
Now, now, now, not everybody thinks that jail is the proper answer for spammers. Various colorful forms of execution have also been proposed.
With the obvious joke told, you can turn the thread toward serious discussion, if you like. Step One is to explain why you do not believe that enforcement of private property rights is a proper function of government.
Who among us has asked "we the people" to throw somebody in prison for being a pain in the ass?
Not me. I do, however, insist that people who repeatedly and deliberately violate my property rights be locked away long enough to convince them that honest toil is preferable to a second incarceration.
It's the responsiblity of "we, the people" to create justifiable penalties for offences, and then enforce them.
A typical spammer imposes costs of several thousand dollars upon his targets per offense (don't take my word for it: just multiply one second to "just hit delete" by the number of spam targets and then by the minimum wage). We The People have already figured out that somebody who deliberately and repeatedly causes thousands of dollars worth of damage ought to go to jail.
As much as people dislike spam, to the best of my knowledge, at least, it isn't breaking any laws (and should even be protected under the first amendment here in the States).
Nonsense. Even setting aside the obvious frauds contraband offers, unauthorized use of trademarks, etc. found in 99+% of spam, it is a violation of property rights. The First Amendment does not protect spamming any more than it protects grafitti vandalism.
At most, the law might reasonably tolerate spam if it evidences no attempt to evade filtering -- no forged headers, no "v1agra" munges, no misleading subject lines, no nothing. The use of such techniques creates a "bright line" between spamming and legitimate bulk e-mail, because it constitutes prima facie evidence of intent to intrude without permission (and, indeed, against an express prohibition).
Bottom Line: The computer-cracking laws ought to be clarified so that the evasion or spoofing of a spam filter is treated just like the evasion or spoofing of a password prompt.
Too many is the case that people just want to beat their heads in with baseball bats or delete all their files on all their computers. This activity is not productive.
When you show me someone who can still send e-mail after his head has been beaten in with a baseball bat or all the files on all his computers have been deleted, then I'll concede your argument.
If the bad guys have to come up with fakes of decently-designed ID cards, they have to make a lot more contacts and take a lot more actions. Every one of these is another opportunity for counterintelligence forces to detect their activity.
No, they have to come up with one more contact (or zero more contacts if the terrorist organization already includes a good forger) and take one more action that would get lost in the noise of underage drinkers and identity-theft petty scammers.
You were still allowed to consider books that you didn't think you'd be interested in.
Just like an a la carte system in which you can consider all the available channels before deciding which to accept and which to reject.
You could always flip through it while deciding whether to buy it.
Just like an a la carte system in which you can watch previews, watch a few shows at a friend's house, etc, before deciding which to accept and which to reject.
Nobody came up to you and said, "You've really only liked books from these two shelves. I'll give you a discount on the books you do buy if you let me lock the rest of the store so you can't look through those books anymore," which is a better analogy to my argument.
Just like an a la carte system in which the cable company will never, ever, under any circumstances, allow you to change your initial subsciption choices. Unfortunately for your argument, nobody is proposing such a system.
The point is that they put twelve songs on a CD, knowing that many people will buy it for one or two -- but also knowing that quite a few people will like other songs on the CD, and enjoy them.
You really think the labels give a damn about the latter?
There is something wrong with telling people that they can elect to not have the option of seeing information they don't think they'll be interested in, and save money in the deal.
According to this absurd argument, it was evil of my mom to explain that I ought to carefully consider which books to buy (and therefore, which ones to not buy) with my allowance.
I'd much prefer a system wherein The Office Supplies Channel and Left-Handed Epileptic Aluminum Siding Consultant Television would disappear and be replaced by something that more than three people have an interest in.
If your local cable provider knew of any such programming, they would have replaced TOSC and LHEASCTV a long time ago.
That does not follow. The various single-digit-audience channels exist because they are a cheap way for the cable companies to pad their "We Offer Eleventeen Zillion Channels!!" statistic -- replacing them with a handful that people actually watch would not necessarily help their bottom line (if they lose the subscribers who don't look past the impressive eleventeen-zillion number).
They quoted research that said that if they did go a la carte that it would cost $187.50 for 30 channels!
Er, you did notice the source of that "research" and realized that it's about as credible as Microsoft "research" into the cost of running Linux, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have no use for a Jeep as such, and would want to sell it with minimum mileage. So, they could either waive that "one year" clause, or I could keep it in my garage, stickers unseen by human eyes, for a year -- their choice.
Of course he can comply with the law. All he has to do is stop spamming.
Spamcop is under no obligation to make it easy for him, just possible.
Yes, because each spammer takes about that much from his victims, when you do the math.
Time wasted? What time wasted? There are DECENT (and free) spam filters built into Thunderbird. There are utilities like SpamAssassin.
Yes -- and if circumventing SpamAssassin got you the same jail time as circumventing any other computer security system, the problem would go away. It wouldn't even be necessary to make spam illegal in and of itself -- spammers would have a choice of not using antifilter techniques and being trivially blocked, or continuing to sell "v1a*gr@" and going to jail.
Look, I get a few hundred spam a day....
If you don't care about such things, you have the option of not complaining to the police when you get spammed, or your stereo gets boosted, or whatever. The rest of us who do insist on protecting our private property rights will agree to disagree, so long as you do not actually prevent the police and courts from doing their jobs.
Such a strategy might have worked a decade agim byt it's simply too late for that now. The associations "spam=scam" and "spam=porn" have become indelible.
Well, good for you.
When dealing with spammers, who are sociopaths for whom the word "conscience" means "a mysterious thing other people have that I might be able to exploit somehow", other techniques are required.
Here's hoping that he sees this as his big chance to try the "insult the judge to his face every fifteen seconds" strategy he daydreamed about in law school.
Joking aside, the prohibition against "cruel and unusual" punishments simply means that the punishment must be in proportion to the crime according to generally accepted standards of criminal justice. If one adds up the amount of time and money wasted as a direct result of a single spam run, one can make a case that the punishment for spamming ought to be similar to that for kidnapping someone for several weeks and cleaning out his bank account (the only difference is that the damage in the former case is spread among more people).
Nope. It doesn't matter if he relays his computer crimes through the Spirit Rover commlink -- if he's phyically in the US and the Feds have the evidence, he can be arrested and charged.
Bottom line: If the Feds are serious about enforcing the law (which is the real rub), a spammer needs to physically get his ass out of the US, unless he doesn't mind having said ass traded back and forth for ciggies.
Did Bill Clinton teach you how to redefine ordinary English words, or did you teach him?
Of course a filter is an access control mechanism -- denying access to some and granting it to others is its entire function.
A filter is not an access control mechanism and bypassing it is no different to bypassing a door-man at a club by actually dressing well.
Nope; the filter-cracking techniques of spammers are instead equivalent to bypassing a door-man by wearing a forged badge that makes you appear to be a legitimate visitor when you aren't.
Unauthorised access means you or something you can control or pre-program can interact with a system or place.
No, unauthorized access means access that is not authorized by the owner of the property. For example, if I put up a spam filter to keep out the spam you send and you use some trick to get it into my inbox anyway, then you have gained [drum roll] unauthorized access.
Nonsense. A spam filter is erected to keep out spam (duh). If a spammer deliberately circumvents it to get spam in, then he's gained unauthorized access.
you cannot gain any information from someones computer just by sending an email
Irrelevant. Entering private property without permission (in this case, against an express prohibition) is trespassing whether or not you deliberately remove anything you find there (if you do, you commit an additional crime of theft, but it's a separate issue).
you cannot damage a computer by sending an email
Also irrelevant. Repeat above paragraph, replacing "remove" with "damage" and "theft" with "vandalism".
The only unathorised thing you could do is flood one system with emails and that would count as a DoS attack.
More and more irrelevant. Trespassing is trespassing whether you do it once or ten thousand times.
Spammers may be a sub-species of basterds and dont get me wrong i'd have fun capping them all, but you cant make being a basterd illigal on its own!
No, you can't make it illegal to be a bastard. You can, and all civilized societies do, make it illegal to intrude on other people's property after you have been put on notice that you aren't welcome (and the use of any filter-evasion technique is prima facie evidence that the spammer is wilfully doing just that).
Well, there's the proper point of attack for the law. We throw people in jail for cracking other forms of computer security in order to gain unauthorized access to other people's systems; we need to enforce the same laws against this subspecies of cracking.
A perfectly fair technological solution has already been offered -- place steel bars between the spammer and the outside world where the computers are. Duh.
The most effective way to minimize it is [drum roll] to make it known that if you get caught doing it you will go to jail. Duh.
On second thought, never mind that earlier invitation to a serious discussion. Arguing with someone who (as an inescapable corrolary) thinks that the solution to burglary is to convince everyone not to buy from fences is an exersize in futility.
Now, now, now, not everybody thinks that jail is the proper answer for spammers. Various colorful forms of execution have also been proposed.
With the obvious joke told, you can turn the thread toward serious discussion, if you like. Step One is to explain why you do not believe that enforcement of private property rights is a proper function of government.
Not me. I do, however, insist that people who repeatedly and deliberately violate my property rights be locked away long enough to convince them that honest toil is preferable to a second incarceration.
It's the responsiblity of "we, the people" to create justifiable penalties for offences, and then enforce them.
A typical spammer imposes costs of several thousand dollars upon his targets per offense (don't take my word for it: just multiply one second to "just hit delete" by the number of spam targets and then by the minimum wage). We The People have already figured out that somebody who deliberately and repeatedly causes thousands of dollars worth of damage ought to go to jail.
Nonsense. Even setting aside the obvious frauds contraband offers, unauthorized use of trademarks, etc. found in 99+% of spam, it is a violation of property rights. The First Amendment does not protect spamming any more than it protects grafitti vandalism.
At most, the law might reasonably tolerate spam if it evidences no attempt to evade filtering -- no forged headers, no "v1agra" munges, no misleading subject lines, no nothing. The use of such techniques creates a "bright line" between spamming and legitimate bulk e-mail, because it constitutes prima facie evidence of intent to intrude without permission (and, indeed, against an express prohibition).
Bottom Line: The computer-cracking laws ought to be clarified so that the evasion or spoofing of a spam filter is treated just like the evasion or spoofing of a password prompt.
When you show me someone who can still send e-mail after his head has been beaten in with a baseball bat or all the files on all his computers have been deleted, then I'll concede your argument.
No, they have to come up with one more contact (or zero more contacts if the terrorist organization already includes a good forger) and take one more action that would get lost in the noise of underage drinkers and identity-theft petty scammers.
Just like an a la carte system in which you can consider all the available channels before deciding which to accept and which to reject.
You could always flip through it while deciding whether to buy it.
Just like an a la carte system in which you can watch previews, watch a few shows at a friend's house, etc, before deciding which to accept and which to reject.
Nobody came up to you and said, "You've really only liked books from these two shelves. I'll give you a discount on the books you do buy if you let me lock the rest of the store so you can't look through those books anymore," which is a better analogy to my argument.
Just like an a la carte system in which the cable company will never, ever, under any circumstances, allow you to change your initial subsciption choices. Unfortunately for your argument, nobody is proposing such a system.
You really think the labels give a damn about the latter?
That can't be helped as long as the greedy capitalist running dogs expect you to pay for sources of informtion.
In any case, the bottom line comes down to this:
According to this absurd argument, it was evil of my mom to explain that I ought to carefully consider which books to buy (and therefore, which ones to not buy) with my allowance.
If your local cable provider knew of any such programming, they would have replaced TOSC and LHEASCTV a long time ago.
That does not follow. The various single-digit-audience channels exist because they are a cheap way for the cable companies to pad their "We Offer Eleventeen Zillion Channels!!" statistic -- replacing them with a handful that people actually watch would not necessarily help their bottom line (if they lose the subscribers who don't look past the impressive eleventeen-zillion number).
Er, you did notice the source of that "research" and realized that it's about as credible as Microsoft "research" into the cost of running Linux, right?