well, yeah, but the closest to Libertarian member of Congress, Ron Paul (R-TX), voted no
Paul's opposition to Big Government is generally commendable, but sometimes it becomes a reflex substitute for thought. In this case, the government action was a protection of rights (specifically, the right to keep trespassers out of your phone line), not (as usual) another infringement.
They don't necessarily have the right to call you out of the blue, but if the information is to be statistically valid that's exactly what they have to do.
If you call me out of the blue, you're going to get yourself a nice big fat pack of lies. Put that in your survey.
IIRC, the government can't regulate political speech, as it's protected by the first ammendment.
So you can paste a poster reading "Bush Is A Boob" or "Daschle Is A Dope" (whichever you prefer) any old place you want -- a mailbox, somebody's house, the steps of the US Capitol, whatever? I don't think so....
Obviously, political speech, like any other speech, does not trump private property rights. This is just an excuse for politicians to not have to obey the laws they make for everybody else.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If anything, a do not call list would help them reduce the costs by eliminating unnecessary phone calls.
No, because a lot of people don't want to be bothered by telepests but have a sufficiently low sales resistance that they can be fast-talked into buying their wares anyway. The do-not-call list cuts off sales from this market segment.
I do think that certain surveys, such as the youth antismoking survey I had the pleasure of administering, should be exempt from Do Not Call lists, as those will actually be used to figure out ways that kids can be convinced that not only is smoking bad for their health, they should not try it (at least until they are of legal age).
That's easy. Just make it legal for telemarketers to make as many calls as they want to underage smokers, and the problem will vanish overnight.
However, I get queasy reading the posts celebrating the demise of companies with no regard for the people who will be affected by that demise. It smacks of, if not outright malignance, then unnecessary insensitivity for the plight of fellow humans.
Insensitivity to the "plight" of someone who chose to make a living by pestering his fellow man sounds to me like a textbook example of karmic payback.
Do you propose a waiting period for out-going mail?
Sort of. I propose that outgoing mail on new accounts be throttled down with minor delays (a second or two per destination address up to the first hundred or so each day, increasing to 5-10 seconds per destination addresses after that). That would be trivial to legitimate users, but would restrain spammers sufficiently that they probably wouldn't find a single sucker before they got caught and booted.
Almost all of these situations have come because someone is too lazy to come and see me face-to-face when I could have explained a concept to them in 5 minutes by drawing some diagrams - something I could never have done in 100 emails.
I have another problem, the use of ellipses...people...seem to think...that... randomly placing ellipses...all over...their message...will somehow... absolve them...of punctuation... when all it really does...is annoy.
I thought it meant that you were quoting William Shatner.
"Spam" is a term that is unique to the person saying it or hearing it.
Not at all. "Spam" is unsolicited bulk e-mail. The only part of that definition that is in the least ambiguous is the minimum quality that constitutes "bulk" (however, this is not a problem in practice -- the gray-area range of a few hundred or thousand is several orders of magnitude below the size of a typical spam dump).
If they don't comply, THEN there is a cause for legal action - not before they have been warned by recipient for the first time.
Nonsense. A law against spamming is already a warning that you had better not spam. By your reasoning, there should be no action against a murderer unless the victim sends a complaint (via John Edward, perhaps).
Essentially, enforcement would probably look like typcial bunko-squad enforcement -- a given violator has maybe a 95% chance of getting away with it, a 4% chance of getting some minor hassle, and a 1% chance of being the guy caught just as the authorities decided to Make An Example Of Somebody and spending the next 5-20 as the Bride of Bubba.
If no one ever buys anything from spammers, spam will stop.
As somebody noted in another message, this simply is not true. As long as there is a single clueless advertiser thinks that spam might work, spammers will still have a market for their services.
If your definition of "buys anything from spammers" includes that, well, then your assertion is trivially true by defintion -- but still trivial.
Re:Something Smarter Is Needed
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Cornucopia of Spam
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Once laws start up the SPAMMERS will move offshore.
The difference is that spammers need a point of contact to make money. Making their bandwidth thefts explictly illegal allows the police to seize the contact points.
If you're going to try a system that only works if everybody does it (on pain of being blackholed out of the community of people who do use it), then there's no need for sender-pays. A simple regulator throttle on outgoing e-mail (e.g. anybody who's sent to more than 100 addresses today has mail delayed 2 seconds per additional address, escalating upwards from there) would suffice.
Sender-pays is at best a poorly thought-out concept, at worst a cynical ploy for more money.
Why, the nerve of these people to suggest that acting through the due process of law (a junk-fax suit) is OK but vigilante breaking-and-entering (the Berman bill) is not OK...
Slashdot Mirror
Now, now, now -- the vital role of the telephone in conducting random surveys has been well known ever since the Landon administration.
Paul's opposition to Big Government is generally commendable, but sometimes it becomes a reflex substitute for thought. In this case, the government action was a protection of rights (specifically, the right to keep trespassers out of your phone line), not (as usual) another infringement.
If you call me out of the blue, you're going to get yourself a nice big fat pack of lies. Put that in your survey.
So you can paste a poster reading "Bush Is A Boob" or "Daschle Is A Dope" (whichever you prefer) any old place you want -- a mailbox, somebody's house, the steps of the US Capitol, whatever? I don't think so....
Obviously, political speech, like any other speech, does not trump private property rights. This is just an excuse for politicians to not have to obey the laws they make for everybody else.
No, because a lot of people don't want to be bothered by telepests but have a sufficiently low sales resistance that they can be fast-talked into buying their wares anyway. The do-not-call list cuts off sales from this market segment.
That's easy. Just make it legal for telemarketers to make as many calls as they want to underage smokers, and the problem will vanish overnight.
Actually, deciding to buy from X and not to buy from Y is, ultimately, the only way to make your voice heard on marketing issues.
Insensitivity to the "plight" of someone who chose to make a living by pestering his fellow man sounds to me like a textbook example of karmic payback.
Sort of. I propose that outgoing mail on new accounts be throttled down with minor delays (a second or two per destination address up to the first hundred or so each day, increasing to 5-10 seconds per destination addresses after that). That would be trivial to legitimate users, but would restrain spammers sufficiently that they probably wouldn't find a single sucker before they got caught and booted.
Attachment: diagram.bmp
I thought it meant that you were quoting William Shatner.
We are talking about the concepts behind the novel, not some concept you pulled out of your nether regions. Do try to keep up.
Starship Troopers is a special case, as Verhoeven was going out of his way to misrepresent the concepts behind the novel.
OK, folks, all together now:
There, was that so difficult to comprehend?
I'll say it again: legislation on this matter will only serve to hamper civil liberties.
Theft is not a civil liberty.
Not at all. "Spam" is unsolicited bulk e-mail. The only part of that definition that is in the least ambiguous is the minimum quality that constitutes "bulk" (however, this is not a problem in practice -- the gray-area range of a few hundred or thousand is several orders of magnitude below the size of a typical spam dump).
Nonsense. A law against spamming is already a warning that you had better not spam. By your reasoning, there should be no action against a murderer unless the victim sends a complaint (via John Edward, perhaps).
Essentially, enforcement would probably look like typcial bunko-squad enforcement -- a given violator has maybe a 95% chance of getting away with it, a 4% chance of getting some minor hassle, and a 1% chance of being the guy caught just as the authorities decided to Make An Example Of Somebody and spending the next 5-20 as the Bride of Bubba.
I for one would prefer to live in a country where prostitution was legal and the cops conducted nightly sweeps to round up and jail spammers.
As somebody noted in another message, this simply is not true. As long as there is a single clueless advertiser thinks that spam might work, spammers will still have a market for their services.
If your definition of "buys anything from spammers" includes that, well, then your assertion is trivially true by defintion -- but still trivial.
The difference is that spammers need a point of contact to make money. Making their bandwidth thefts explictly illegal allows the police to seize the contact points.
Well, then, I'm glad that we agree that telemarketers are vermin.
I would. I am paying for the use of a telephone for my purposes, not theirs.
Sender-pays is at best a poorly thought-out concept, at worst a cynical ploy for more money.
Why, the nerve of these people to suggest that acting through the due process of law (a junk-fax suit) is OK but vigilante breaking-and-entering (the Berman bill) is not OK...