So increased entropy = dirty in your book. Well, by that standard we might as well ignore pollution because we'll never be rid of it unless we all drop dead and it'll still exist, we just won't be around to care anymore.
By any standard we'll never be rid of pollution. The whole point of pollution is it's only a problem in large quantities. That's why most forms of pollution aren't criminal, they're merely taxed so as to discourage, not to elminate.
Feel free to try it. If companies could get away with this, do you seriously think that they wouldn't do it?
I didn't say that it was possible to do it (send junk mail postage due). I just don't think there's a law specifically against it. The postal service has used a technical solution to the problem, not a legal one.
Brilliant idea! I'm sure such a business [an ISP without an email account] would be a great success.
I think it would be too. Most people I know do not use their ISPs email account.
Tell you what, it's so brilliant an idea, I'm going to let you have first crack at it. Try it and let me know how it goes!
I don't have enough capital to start up a successful ISP. Care to loan me some?
Regardless of where the mail servers are, regardless of where the spam originates, there has to be some way to get their money from you to them. If those connected in that process were liable to be sued, get jail time, or better yet BOTH, do you really think they would risk it?
Tracking people down costs far too much money to bother, even if it is possible. You can't sue everyone connected in that process, because many of them will be innocent victims. Are you going to sue paypal for accepting a payment from someone who happens to selling a product to someone who happens to have a reseller program which happens to have someone who sent a spam? You can't do that. Are you going to try to get a warrant from paypal? Too expensive, especially since that's only going to take you one step closer to finding the culprit. Or are you going to make some law a la the Patriot act forcing paypal to name names without a warrant?
Perhaps a few would...at first.
A few? I think you underestimate the stupidity of the common spammer. Do you really think these people are making money off these enlarge your penis now suppliments? Even if there were a market for such a product, that market has long been saturated. Sure, there are a few spammers making money, but from judging from the mail I receive it seems to be very few. And you yourself claim that 99% of spammers are already breaking the law. The fear of jail hasn't stopped them yet.
So now it's my ISP, when it comes to responsibility? You seem confused on this point later, when it comes to rights.
The ISPs, collectively, are primarily responsible for policing the traffic that goes through it. For things like murder or grand theft I could justify the FBI getting involved, but not for something as petty as spam.
You're good at offering the useless option, but your logic is bunk. "They could always nullify their peering agreements." Right. Then they'd go out of business, just like I'd go out of business if I decided to stop offering e-mail as a service.
Any large ISP could easily have the power to force its downstream ISPs to stop spammers. After they did that they'd be able to negotiate much more favorable peering agreements with other ISPs. Of course they won't do that, because they're making money off these spammers. And the smaller ISPs, in turn, are getting lower prices as a result.
Using your logic, the big picture is: either accept spam, or everyone who doesn't like it should leave. Following this through to its logical conclusion, the internet would be a bunch of spammers' networks and nothing else.
There are plenty of people who accept spam yet are not spammers themselves. In fact, this is the majority of people. Considering how easy it is to stop receiving spam (basically just don't give away your email address on the public internet), it's clear that it's not that big of a deal to most people.
The companies who the Department of Commerce say are losing $10billion a year to spam ought to love that solution -- just don't use the internet!
Please. Anyone can inflate numbers to make a minor problem seem like a major one. Don't quote FUD.
To really ensure security, you should always assume that your neighbors, your local bank robbers, and the NSA are all snooping on you, and simply encrypt anything important.
No, to really ensure security, you should always assume that your neighbors, your local bank robbers, and the NSA are all snooping on you and they have your encryption key.
If it's that important, you shouldn't be transferring it over the internet at all.
Now I don't think some 13 year old boys checking out a penthouse will become raving serial rapists but there are age laws put in place, and for a good reason.
All the sniffing software is written for the 2.6Ghz range, so you can rest assured that no one other than you and the intended recipient will be able to read the message.
From the context, it should be obvious that our complainant is stating that he makes $5k less than the average minimum paid for his level of experience
What the hell is an average minimum?
wherein "minimum" is the lower/lowest amount in the range normally paid the people doing the same job in his/her geographical area.
Normally paid? How do you figure out whhat is the range normally paid? Obviously he's not making below the lowest amount paid to people in his geographical area.
Not to be condescending, but professionals have no mandated minimum salaries, so the meaning should have been unambiguous.
Well, it wasn't. I've gotten three replies now with three different answers. So there was nothing unambiguous about it.
Sending out paper junk mail and making the recipient pay for it? Yes, absolutely there is a law against that.
Please cite it for me. I don't think you're right.
So...you'd limit my choices to "don't run an ISP" or "run an ISP and pay for a T1s worth of spam"?
You could always run an ISP without providing email accounts.
How about "run an ISP and eliminate spam by making it illegal"? That's what we're talking about, I thought.
Oh yeah, making spam illegal is really going to eliminate it. I doubt it. In any case, just because it's convenient for you to get the FBI to police your ISP instead of policing it yourself, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with it.
They [your upstream provider] don't have any more control over it [spam] than I do.
Sure they do. It's their downstream providers that are providing a large portion of the spam, and it's their peers that are providing the rest. Your upstream provider has terms of service agreements which all of these entities.
When someone DoSes me, I don't complain to my upstream, I contact the ISP of the person doing it.
When someone DoSes me, I contact my upstream provider, to have them block that IP.
You have a real problem with attacking the middleman anyway, if there's a guy outside of my house with a bullhorn telling me to buy his penis enlargement formula, I don't complain to my landlord about not having built a soundproof house, nor do I try to build soundproof walls into the house myself. I call the freakin cops.
Sure, but you don't own the internet. The internet is not your house.
Your first amendment right to receive spam? You must be a spammer.
And you must be a moron.
Here's the problem with your "first amendment right to receive spam": it doesn't exist.
It most certainly does.
My mail server is my property, not my customers', and certainly not some bozo spammer's.
What does that have to do with my first amendment righht to receive spam? We already have laws about property rights. We don't need any more.
Besides, even if there was a stringent anti-spam law, if you opted in to receive such e-mail, you could.
I shouldn't have to opt-in. Freedom of speech is not an opt-in system.
The burden of making the choice should fall on the minority in that case, not the majority.
Freedom of speech exists to protect the minority, not the majority.
You say you want to receive spam?
No, I said I have a first amendment right to receive it.
Just now, I logged into our SQL preferences database and checked: out of our thousands of customers, exactly 0 have turned off spam filtering.
While we're sharing anecdotes, Verizon offers spam filtering which is on by default. I've turned it off.
If you supply it [my email address] to me privately, I will be happy to forward you all of it [spam] you've ever wanted.
Send it to spamlaw@inbox.org. I'll add it to my database of spam that I'm using to create a filter.
Good point. If you keep it low-key, you're probably not going to get caught. I still think if your employer found out you were actively getting out your resume that you'd be fired though. I'd probably at least start looking for his/her replacement.
Most places have a salary range for any given title. "The miminum we pay a nurse is $16 an hour". He's below that.
It's possible that's what he was talking about, but if so, how did that happen? If the place has a policy to pay people a certain salary why aren't they following it? Is it intentional? Is it an oversight?
I've heard of minimum salaries for union employees, like nurses, but he specifically said he was non-union. So where does this minimum come from?
Either way, first get the resume out there for a week or two.
I wouldn't suggest that. If you get out your resume, and your employer finds out, then you probably will get fired. If you're a good worker getting paid less than new hires, you're not going to get fired simply because you asked for a salary adjustment.
Just remember, a salary is better than unemployment.
Hmm, work my ass off and get paid a lot vs. call some telephone number one a week and get an unemployment check. Personally I'd say a salary is worse than unemployment:).
However, I think a law that targetted the people who pay spammers would be a useful start...they are easier to track down than spammers.
I doubt it. Most of the spam I receive is either selling obviously illegal products or is selling something through a reseller program. You don't want to ban reseller programs, do you?
I didn't say we did.
Let's get it straight then. Do you think we need a law against spam or not?
The SMTP client is
discouraged from repeating the exact request (in the same sequence).
Note I give a 553 error after connection, before they do anything
Then you yourself are in violation of the RFC. Why don't you just not accept the connection in the first place?
so that would obviously map 'don't attempt that again, in that order', to 'don't connect here again', as that's all they've done!
Actually, I don't think that's obvious at all. 553 is supposed to be a response code, not something which is sent upon connection. It's meaning when sent upon connection is completely undefined.
What we need is the couurts to realize it's not content, it's consent.
None of the laws are phrased that way. A law which banned all unsolicited email, without exception, wouldn't be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but none of the laws actually do that. Furthermore, the dormant commerce clause is being violated regardless of the free speech and equal protection issues.
We need stricter laws against accessing people's computers without their consent, aimed specifically at the violations that are occuring over SMTP.
I don't see how that's possible. The very nature of email is based upon sending unsolicited messages. If you only want solicited messages use a pull protocol, not a push one.
Well, mainly, because the people doing so are deliberately hard to track down.
That's the nature of email. It is anonymous. If you don't want to accept anonymous communications, then you shouldn't be accepting emails, certainly not ones with digital signatures, anyway.
It's like saying 'We already have laws against murder', why do we need laws against paying people to murder others? Or using a handgun during a murder?
First of all, we don't need laws against using a handgun during a murder. As for laws against paying people to murder others, that is already covered under the law against murder, so we don't need a separate law for that. Paying someone to murder another is committing murder.
The FBI simply will not get involved when a spammer hijacks 150 computers on Comcast, and there's no way for an individual to stop them.
Nor should the FBI get involved. It should be up to the ISPs to police themselves. Spam is not a serious enough crime to spend my tax money to solve.
I think a laws aginst paying people to spam, or at least making said people responsibly for any crimes the spammers happen to commit, would be a good start.
Depending on the details, if the spamming itself is illegal, paying people to spam probably is as well. In any case, I'd like to see how you'd define "paying people to spam." It seems to me that people will just put in a clause saying "don't spam" and they'll get out of any responsibility. As it is now, I'm opposed to a law against "paying people to spam," since that would make spamming itself illegal, which it is not in all cases.
Most spammers, about 99% of them, sit and abuse illegally hijacked machines that have had open proxies installed on them.
That's not true.
While this is not technically illegal, the spammers are the ones installing said open proxies. This is obviously a violation of various computer crime laws.
And obviously the law isn't doing anything to stop it. Why will yet another law do any good?
And the ones that do not use hijacked machines...well, let's think about this. They're trying to use my computer resources. It's a violation of various computer crimes to use resources that you are not authorized to use.
Again, if there's already a law, why do we need another one?
But wait! I'm sitting there with an open SMTP port, I must be willing to accept all SMTP contact. Sadly, that falls apart...in the SMTP standard there are quite clearly defined replies meaning 'do not attempt to deliver this message again'.
Please provide more information and a link to back up this statement. My cursory glance at the SMTP standard did not see any such reply.
And not a single company takes these '55x' error messages and stop sending. My mail server gets pounded and pounded over and over again, as they connect to my machine despite my clearly denying them access. I'm talking several thousand rejects sent out a day, and there aren't that many spammers.
Are they required to stop sending all messages, or only that particular message? From your description they only need to stop "attempt[ing] to deliver this message again [em mine]."
Pretending what spammers do is completely legal is absurd.
I never pretended that what spammers do is completely legal.
And people have passed laws against it, at least where my mail server is.
Those laws are most likely unconstitutional under the fourteenth amendment and the dormant commerce clause.
It's simply illegal to continue to access a machine that you have been notified you are not authorized to access it
I'll say it one more time. If it's already illegal, then why do we need another law?
No, but that isn't exactly on point. Unless those spammers send their mail only to subcribers of the same ISP, then they (the spammers) are deciding that other ISPs--without the express permission of those ISPs--should bear part of their mass mailing costs.
The express permission is provided in the ISPs peering agreement.
You pay indirectly for the ads which are sent to you on television, as well, through higher product costs. Should we ban that too?
That's a false analogy.
It wasn't an analogy, it was a proof by example. Just because you pay indirectly for somethihng doesn't mean you should ban it.
I may choose whether or not I purchase those products, and by so doing, I may choose whether or not I contribute to those advertising costs.
And likewise you choose whether or not to subscribe to an ISP, and by doing so, you choose whether or not to contribute to thhose advertising costs.
With spam I do not have that choice--I pay for a company's advertising whether I buy their product or not.
You do have a choice. Sign up for an email account, or don't.
True--but First Amendment protection does not extend to making other people pay to present your advertising material.
No one has made anyone else pay to present advertising material. There is a contractual agreement which regulates what traffic may be passed through the network. If that contract is breached, the damaged party has recourse. If you don't agree with the contract, don't enter into it.
Although in most cases spammers do indeed spend some money (sometimes large chunks of it--for anonymous mailing software, mailing lists, lists of open relays, etc.) in carrying out their trade, that does nothing to reduce the costs that they impose without my permission upon me.
Spammers do not impose costs upon you. Your ISP imposes costs upon you, and you gave them permission to do so.
Question: Is it right to mug people as long as you spent a lot of money to acquire a handgun?
You're confusing what I said. I didn't say that it's OK to do anything as long as you pay for it. I was merely responding to your statement: "Use your own damn money to push your agenda--don't waste mine." Spammers do use their own damn money to push their agenda, and they don't waste yours. You waste yours all by yourself.
Aside: In most cases, spammers are operating outside of the bounds of their terms of service with their respective ISPs. When caught, they usually have their accounts terminated--but this does nothing to aid all of the other affected parties in cost recovery.
A law isn't going to help that. Entering into a contract fraudulently is already illegal. ISPs need to start taking deposits. And upstream ISPs need to start penalizing downstream ISPs for the spam sent by their users.
Most decent ISPs already profit off spammers whose accounts are terminated. Monthly fees are paid ahead of time, after all.
spammers are using a public resource, created and paid for in large part by the US Government.
The internet is a private resource, not a public one.
this is about protecting rights. Your right to spam ends the moment you infringe my network (aka property rights) to do it.
Your property rights are not being infringed. How are you saying they are? Am I infringing your property rights by sending this reply? Am I infringing Slashdot's property rights?
the free market might be able to mitigate the problem (by selling email filtering tools) but it is deeply unlikely to solve the problem (aka new email protocols).
The free market can solve the problem by enforcing the contracts they already have against spam. The upstream ISPs need to force the downstream ISPs to enforce their contracts. And the end-users need to force their ISPs to force their upstream ISPs to enforce their contracts. This part is difficult right now because we don't really have a free market.
Spamming is equivalent to sending out paper junk mail, postage due.
Is there a law against that?
Tell me, why on earth should we as a business pay for a pipe that's used to send our customers advertisements that they didn't ask for and universally don't want?!?
Umm, why do you do it? No one is forcing you to.
We aren't being compensated, or given a choice.
Of course you have a choice. Just like you have a choice whether or not watch a television show which has commercials, or buy a newspaper which has advertisements. Your upstream ISP is entering into a voluntary contractual arrangement to provide you with a certain service which includes sending you spam. If you want to be compensated for the spam being sent through your system, you need to talk to your upstream ISP about that.
Spam is not a technical, nor a market, problem.
It's most certainly a market problem. The ISPs choose not to enforce their terms of service, and the upstream ISPs let them get away with it.
Witness the recent (and overwhelmingly celebrated) telemarketing restrictions. The only people upset over this are the telemarketers.
I personally disagree with it, but if an anti-spam law were made similar to it (a national do-not-email list) I'd support it as the lesser of many evils. At least my first amendment right to receive spam is not being infringed.
Slashdot Mirror
You're arguing semantics.
So increased entropy = dirty in your book. Well, by that standard we might as well ignore pollution because we'll never be rid of it unless we all drop dead and it'll still exist, we just won't be around to care anymore.
By any standard we'll never be rid of pollution. The whole point of pollution is it's only a problem in large quantities. That's why most forms of pollution aren't criminal, they're merely taxed so as to discourage, not to elminate.
Feel free to try it. If companies could get away with this, do you seriously think that they wouldn't do it?
I didn't say that it was possible to do it (send junk mail postage due). I just don't think there's a law specifically against it. The postal service has used a technical solution to the problem, not a legal one.
Brilliant idea! I'm sure such a business [an ISP without an email account] would be a great success.
I think it would be too. Most people I know do not use their ISPs email account.
Tell you what, it's so brilliant an idea, I'm going to let you have first crack at it. Try it and let me know how it goes!
I don't have enough capital to start up a successful ISP. Care to loan me some?
Regardless of where the mail servers are, regardless of where the spam originates, there has to be some way to get their money from you to them. If those connected in that process were liable to be sued, get jail time, or better yet BOTH, do you really think they would risk it?
Tracking people down costs far too much money to bother, even if it is possible. You can't sue everyone connected in that process, because many of them will be innocent victims. Are you going to sue paypal for accepting a payment from someone who happens to selling a product to someone who happens to have a reseller program which happens to have someone who sent a spam? You can't do that. Are you going to try to get a warrant from paypal? Too expensive, especially since that's only going to take you one step closer to finding the culprit. Or are you going to make some law a la the Patriot act forcing paypal to name names without a warrant?
Perhaps a few would...at first.
A few? I think you underestimate the stupidity of the common spammer. Do you really think these people are making money off these enlarge your penis now suppliments? Even if there were a market for such a product, that market has long been saturated. Sure, there are a few spammers making money, but from judging from the mail I receive it seems to be very few. And you yourself claim that 99% of spammers are already breaking the law. The fear of jail hasn't stopped them yet.
So now it's my ISP, when it comes to responsibility? You seem confused on this point later, when it comes to rights.
The ISPs, collectively, are primarily responsible for policing the traffic that goes through it. For things like murder or grand theft I could justify the FBI getting involved, but not for something as petty as spam.
You're good at offering the useless option, but your logic is bunk. "They could always nullify their peering agreements." Right. Then they'd go out of business, just like I'd go out of business if I decided to stop offering e-mail as a service.
Any large ISP could easily have the power to force its downstream ISPs to stop spammers. After they did that they'd be able to negotiate much more favorable peering agreements with other ISPs. Of course they won't do that, because they're making money off these spammers. And the smaller ISPs, in turn, are getting lower prices as a result.
Using your logic, the big picture is: either accept spam, or everyone who doesn't like it should leave. Following this through to its logical conclusion, the internet would be a bunch of spammers' networks and nothing else.
There are plenty of people who accept spam yet are not spammers themselves. In fact, this is the majority of people. Considering how easy it is to stop receiving spam (basically just don't give away your email address on the public internet), it's clear that it's not that big of a deal to most people.
The companies who the Department of Commerce say are losing $10billion a year to spam ought to love that solution -- just don't use the internet!
Please. Anyone can inflate numbers to make a minor problem seem like a major one. Don't quote FUD.
You have no interest i
One possible solution is to unionize.
You should have prepared for it anyway, just in case.
To really ensure security, you should always assume that your neighbors, your local bank robbers, and the NSA are all snooping on you, and simply encrypt anything important.
No, to really ensure security, you should always assume that your neighbors, your local bank robbers, and the NSA are all snooping on you and they have your encryption key.
If it's that important, you shouldn't be transferring it over the internet at all.
Nice troll.
Thanks.
Mod this down.. no need to give trolls karma.
Or if you're going to mod it up, at least go for +1 Funny instead of +1 Interesting. Stupid moderators.
Now I don't think some 13 year old boys checking out a penthouse will become raving serial rapists but there are age laws put in place, and for a good reason.
What would that good reason be?
All the sniffing software is written for the 2.6Ghz range, so you can rest assured that no one other than you and the intended recipient will be able to read the message.
From the context, it should be obvious that our complainant is stating that he makes $5k less than the average minimum paid for his level of experience
What the hell is an average minimum?
wherein "minimum" is the lower/lowest amount in the range normally paid the people doing the same job in his/her geographical area.
Normally paid? How do you figure out whhat is the range normally paid? Obviously he's not making below the lowest amount paid to people in his geographical area.
Not to be condescending, but professionals have no mandated minimum salaries, so the meaning should have been unambiguous.
Well, it wasn't. I've gotten three replies now with three different answers. So there was nothing unambiguous about it.
It's possible to circulate one's resume discretely, and I suppose it's usually a good idea to do so.
Yeah, someone else already mentioned that, and I agreed with him.
But I hate to imagine what kind of company you're working for, if they'd fire somebody just for circulating a resume!
I don't work for a company.
Indeed, that's a pretty stupid policy, considering the costs of unnecessary employee churn.
If the guy's circulating his resume, chances are you're going to save money by getting his replacement before he quits on you.
Sending out paper junk mail and making the recipient pay for it? Yes, absolutely there is a law against that.
Please cite it for me. I don't think you're right.
So...you'd limit my choices to "don't run an ISP" or "run an ISP and pay for a T1s worth of spam"?
You could always run an ISP without providing email accounts.
How about "run an ISP and eliminate spam by making it illegal"? That's what we're talking about, I thought.
Oh yeah, making spam illegal is really going to eliminate it. I doubt it. In any case, just because it's convenient for you to get the FBI to police your ISP instead of policing it yourself, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with it.
They [your upstream provider] don't have any more control over it [spam] than I do.
Sure they do. It's their downstream providers that are providing a large portion of the spam, and it's their peers that are providing the rest. Your upstream provider has terms of service agreements which all of these entities.
When someone DoSes me, I don't complain to my upstream, I contact the ISP of the person doing it.
When someone DoSes me, I contact my upstream provider, to have them block that IP.
You have a real problem with attacking the middleman anyway, if there's a guy outside of my house with a bullhorn telling me to buy his penis enlargement formula, I don't complain to my landlord about not having built a soundproof house, nor do I try to build soundproof walls into the house myself. I call the freakin cops.
Sure, but you don't own the internet. The internet is not your house.
Your first amendment right to receive spam? You must be a spammer.
And you must be a moron.
Here's the problem with your "first amendment right to receive spam": it doesn't exist.
It most certainly does.
My mail server is my property, not my customers', and certainly not some bozo spammer's.
What does that have to do with my first amendment righht to receive spam? We already have laws about property rights. We don't need any more.
Besides, even if there was a stringent anti-spam law, if you opted in to receive such e-mail, you could.
I shouldn't have to opt-in. Freedom of speech is not an opt-in system.
The burden of making the choice should fall on the minority in that case, not the majority.
Freedom of speech exists to protect the minority, not the majority.
You say you want to receive spam?
No, I said I have a first amendment right to receive it.
Just now, I logged into our SQL preferences database and checked: out of our thousands of customers, exactly 0 have turned off spam filtering.
While we're sharing anecdotes, Verizon offers spam filtering which is on by default. I've turned it off.
If you supply it [my email address] to me privately, I will be happy to forward you all of it [spam] you've ever wanted.
Send it to spamlaw@inbox.org. I'll add it to my database of spam that I'm using to create a filter.
"So where does this minimum come from?"
I'd like him to answer that.
'Well that's exactly what I was doing when I asked what minimum he was talking about. After all, the answers I've gotten are pure speculation.
Good point. If you keep it low-key, you're probably not going to get caught. I still think if your employer found out you were actively getting out your resume that you'd be fired though. I'd probably at least start looking for his/her replacement.
Try to live on $200/week.
I do.
Especially when at the end of the year you have to pay taxes on it.
If you're only making $200/week in unemployment compensation, you won't pay any taxes on it.
Why would a company set a minimum for itself and then break it? Are they aware of this? It doesn't make sense to me.
Most places have a salary range for any given title. "The miminum we pay a nurse is $16 an hour". He's below that.
It's possible that's what he was talking about, but if so, how did that happen? If the place has a policy to pay people a certain salary why aren't they following it? Is it intentional? Is it an oversight?
I've heard of minimum salaries for union employees, like nurses, but he specifically said he was non-union. So where does this minimum come from?
Why do you need laws or some Union to do this for you? Maybe if your inept and just trying to milk your company you need those things.
Maybe he's just not good at negotiation?
Either way, first get the resume out there for a week or two.
I wouldn't suggest that. If you get out your resume, and your employer finds out, then you probably will get fired. If you're a good worker getting paid less than new hires, you're not going to get fired simply because you asked for a salary adjustment.
Just remember, a salary is better than unemployment.
Hmm, work my ass off and get paid a lot vs. call some telephone number one a week and get an unemployment check. Personally I'd say a salary is worse than unemployment :).
I am currently making over $5k less than the minimum for my title
Huh? How can you be making less than the minimum? What minimum are you talking about?
Did I say another law would do any good?
If not, then what exactly did you say?
However, I think a law that targetted the people who pay spammers would be a useful start...they are easier to track down than spammers.
I doubt it. Most of the spam I receive is either selling obviously illegal products or is selling something through a reseller program. You don't want to ban reseller programs, do you?
I didn't say we did.
Let's get it straight then. Do you think we need a law against spam or not?
Note I give a 553 error after connection, before they do anything
Then you yourself are in violation of the RFC. Why don't you just not accept the connection in the first place?
so that would obviously map 'don't attempt that again, in that order', to 'don't connect here again', as that's all they've done!
Actually, I don't think that's obvious at all. 553 is supposed to be a response code, not something which is sent upon connection. It's meaning when sent upon connection is completely undefined.
What we need is the couurts to realize it's not content, it's consent.
None of the laws are phrased that way. A law which banned all unsolicited email, without exception, wouldn't be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but none of the laws actually do that. Furthermore, the dormant commerce clause is being violated regardless of the free speech and equal protection issues.
We need stricter laws against accessing people's computers without their consent, aimed specifically at the violations that are occuring over SMTP.
I don't see how that's possible. The very nature of email is based upon sending unsolicited messages. If you only want solicited messages use a pull protocol, not a push one.
Well, mainly, because the people doing so are deliberately hard to track down.
That's the nature of email. It is anonymous. If you don't want to accept anonymous communications, then you shouldn't be accepting emails, certainly not ones with digital signatures, anyway.
It's like saying 'We already have laws against murder', why do we need laws against paying people to murder others? Or using a handgun during a murder?
First of all, we don't need laws against using a handgun during a murder. As for laws against paying people to murder others, that is already covered under the law against murder, so we don't need a separate law for that. Paying someone to murder another is committing murder.
The FBI simply will not get involved when a spammer hijacks 150 computers on Comcast, and there's no way for an individual to stop them.
Nor should the FBI get involved. It should be up to the ISPs to police themselves. Spam is not a serious enough crime to spend my tax money to solve.
I think a laws aginst paying people to spam, or at least making said people responsibly for any crimes the spammers happen to commit, would be a good start.
Depending on the details, if the spamming itself is illegal, paying people to spam probably is as well. In any case, I'd like to see how you'd define "paying people to spam." It seems to me that people will just put in a clause saying "don't spam" and they'll get out of any responsibility. As it is now, I'm opposed to a law against "paying people to spam," since that would make spamming itself illegal, which it is not in all cases.
Most spammers, about 99% of them, sit and abuse illegally hijacked machines that have had open proxies installed on them.
That's not true.
While this is not technically illegal, the spammers are the ones installing said open proxies. This is obviously a violation of various computer crime laws.
And obviously the law isn't doing anything to stop it. Why will yet another law do any good?
And the ones that do not use hijacked machines...well, let's think about this. They're trying to use my computer resources. It's a violation of various computer crimes to use resources that you are not authorized to use.
Again, if there's already a law, why do we need another one?
But wait! I'm sitting there with an open SMTP port, I must be willing to accept all SMTP contact. Sadly, that falls apart...in the SMTP standard there are quite clearly defined replies meaning 'do not attempt to deliver this message again'.
Please provide more information and a link to back up this statement. My cursory glance at the SMTP standard did not see any such reply.
And not a single company takes these '55x' error messages and stop sending. My mail server gets pounded and pounded over and over again, as they connect to my machine despite my clearly denying them access. I'm talking several thousand rejects sent out a day, and there aren't that many spammers.
Are they required to stop sending all messages, or only that particular message? From your description they only need to stop "attempt[ing] to deliver this message again [em mine]."
Pretending what spammers do is completely legal is absurd.
I never pretended that what spammers do is completely legal.
And people have passed laws against it, at least where my mail server is.
Those laws are most likely unconstitutional under the fourteenth amendment and the dormant commerce clause.
It's simply illegal to continue to access a machine that you have been notified you are not authorized to access it
I'll say it one more time. If it's already illegal, then why do we need another law?
No, but that isn't exactly on point. Unless those spammers send their mail only to subcribers of the same ISP, then they (the spammers) are deciding that other ISPs--without the express permission of those ISPs--should bear part of their mass mailing costs.
The express permission is provided in the ISPs peering agreement.
You pay indirectly for the ads which are sent to you on television, as well, through higher product costs. Should we ban that too?
That's a false analogy.
It wasn't an analogy, it was a proof by example. Just because you pay indirectly for somethihng doesn't mean you should ban it.
I may choose whether or not I purchase those products, and by so doing, I may choose whether or not I contribute to those advertising costs.
And likewise you choose whether or not to subscribe to an ISP, and by doing so, you choose whether or not to contribute to thhose advertising costs.
With spam I do not have that choice--I pay for a company's advertising whether I buy their product or not.
You do have a choice. Sign up for an email account, or don't.
True--but First Amendment protection does not extend to making other people pay to present your advertising material.
No one has made anyone else pay to present advertising material. There is a contractual agreement which regulates what traffic may be passed through the network. If that contract is breached, the damaged party has recourse. If you don't agree with the contract, don't enter into it.
Although in most cases spammers do indeed spend some money (sometimes large chunks of it--for anonymous mailing software, mailing lists, lists of open relays, etc.) in carrying out their trade, that does nothing to reduce the costs that they impose without my permission upon me.
Spammers do not impose costs upon you. Your ISP imposes costs upon you, and you gave them permission to do so.
Question: Is it right to mug people as long as you spent a lot of money to acquire a handgun?
You're confusing what I said. I didn't say that it's OK to do anything as long as you pay for it. I was merely responding to your statement: "Use your own damn money to push your agenda--don't waste mine." Spammers do use their own damn money to push their agenda, and they don't waste yours. You waste yours all by yourself.
Aside: In most cases, spammers are operating outside of the bounds of their terms of service with their respective ISPs. When caught, they usually have their accounts terminated--but this does nothing to aid all of the other affected parties in cost recovery.
A law isn't going to help that. Entering into a contract fraudulently is already illegal. ISPs need to start taking deposits. And upstream ISPs need to start penalizing downstream ISPs for the spam sent by their users.
Most decent ISPs already profit off spammers whose accounts are terminated. Monthly fees are paid ahead of time, after all.
spammers are using a public resource, created and paid for in large part by the US Government.
The internet is a private resource, not a public one.
this is about protecting rights. Your right to spam ends the moment you infringe my network (aka property rights) to do it.
Your property rights are not being infringed. How are you saying they are? Am I infringing your property rights by sending this reply? Am I infringing Slashdot's property rights?
the free market might be able to mitigate the problem (by selling email filtering tools) but it is deeply unlikely to solve the problem (aka new email protocols).
The free market can solve the problem by enforcing the contracts they already have against spam. The upstream ISPs need to force the downstream ISPs to enforce their contracts. And the end-users need to force their ISPs to force their upstream ISPs to enforce their contracts. This part is difficult right now because we don't really have a free market.
Spamming is equivalent to sending out paper junk mail, postage due.
Is there a law against that?
Tell me, why on earth should we as a business pay for a pipe that's used to send our customers advertisements that they didn't ask for and universally don't want?!?
Umm, why do you do it? No one is forcing you to.
We aren't being compensated, or given a choice.
Of course you have a choice. Just like you have a choice whether or not watch a television show which has commercials, or buy a newspaper which has advertisements. Your upstream ISP is entering into a voluntary contractual arrangement to provide you with a certain service which includes sending you spam. If you want to be compensated for the spam being sent through your system, you need to talk to your upstream ISP about that.
Spam is not a technical, nor a market, problem.
It's most certainly a market problem. The ISPs choose not to enforce their terms of service, and the upstream ISPs let them get away with it.
Witness the recent (and overwhelmingly celebrated) telemarketing restrictions. The only people upset over this are the telemarketers.
I personally disagree with it, but if an anti-spam law were made similar to it (a national do-not-email list) I'd support it as the lesser of many evils. At least my first amendment right to receive spam is not being infringed.