No, the DMCA is quite unusual for having a willfulness element [politechbot.com], which goes to the defendant's knowledge of the law rather than guilty conduct.
That's really not that unusual for the type of criminal law the DMCA covers. Criminal copyright infringement also must be done "willfully." Also, it's arguable whether or not the willfulness element really means knowledge of the law itself. That's just one judges interpretation at the moment.
Occasionally ignorance of the law is a defense -- the DMCA oddly enough.
Only to the criminal parts of the DMCA, and it's not really that odd. Any law is going to have a certain level of mens rea required, and because the DMCA is inherently a law invented by congress (and not a common sense rule such as murder laws), the level required is quite high.
I certainly agree that it is within a jury's power to refuse a conviction even if the law was broken. But it's likewise within their power to convict someone even when the law was not broken.
Neither are the DUTY of the jury. The jury is there to decide issues of fact, not whether or not they agree with the law.
It was a few posts back, but my point was that the DMCA must be and is being interpreted horribly.
You mean by slashdotters? The EFF? Other than that, I don't see how it's being interpreted horribly at all.
According to that supreme court ruling the test was whether the item in question had "substantial non-infringing uses". Under the DMCA all sorts of things that pass the "substantial non-infringing uses" test are being declared illegal.
That ruling was applied to contributory copyright law though, not the DMCA. The DMCA has a different test.
Making DeCSS illegal is like making VCRs illegal.
Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean Congress can't do it.
*If* things like DeCSS are brought to the supreme court and *if* they stand by their previous decision then I think these things would be declared legal. That bad interpretation of the DMCA would overruled. It would also make that section of the DMCA mostly useless.
Perhaps, but I don't see the Supreme Court overturning a case like DeCSS. And neither did 2600, which is why they didn't appeal.
Maybe there what copyright infrigment that wasn't caught. Maybe there wasn't. But there definitely WAS legitimate use. The DMCA outlaws both.
There definately was copyright infringement that wasn't caught. At least one instance was committed by me. The DMCA does not outlaw legitimate use. It outlaws the distribution of the product to someone who might then use it legitimately. Big difference.
Me: How could I have copied the DVD to my hard drive without DeCSS?
The same way you copy any file. Open a window to the DVD drive, point to it, hold the mouse down and drag it onto your desktop. That makes a completely functional copy. And you can send it over the internet to a friend and he can watch it on his DVD player. All without DeCSS.
My friends' DVD players doesn't play hard drive files. So I'd have to buy a multi layer DVD burner for tens of thousands of dollars.
So instead I use DeCSS, and then I can watch the movie on my computer.
I am completely serious. If you have any programmer-type friends go and ask them. The file is encrypted, but encryption does not prevent copying or viewing. Any player that can play the original WILL play the copy. Calling it copyprotection or copyright protection is a complete deception. They have been LYING to you.
Encryption prevents viewing. Any player that can play the original does so after decrypting. It may or may not be deceptive to call it "copyprotection or copyright protection." That's semantics. But it certainly is effective in forcing people to pay for the product. Without DeCSS I would have probably paid for that copy of South Park. With DeCSS, I didn't.
I never said the "primary purpose" was legitimate. I said it was being used for legitimate purposes. (You said the court said otherwise.)
Apparently I misread something you said. My apologies.
I'm also saying that based on all the evidence presented in court the "most common purpose" was legitimate, there wasn't a single shred of evidence of illegal use. And that is exactly what I meant when I said the DMCA is intrepreted horribly. How the heck can the the "primary purpose" be an illegal one when the "most common purpose" was legitimate?
There are three possibilities. The product:
a) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
b) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
c) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
In the DeCSS case it may or may not be true that the product has a purpose other than circumvention, but that's irrelevant because it was shown that the product was designed primarily for circumvention.
I specificly said we could assume your claim to have used DeCSS to violate copyright WAS a violation, any result either way to the following is immaterial to my argument.
Absolutely agreed.
Point (4) may lean to fair use also. By making a single personal copy the impact is no more than the loss of a single sale, a pretty miniscule effect on the market value of the work as a whole. It is also far from certain that it really would mean a lost sale.
I state definitively that it would. I don't see how it matters that the loss is miniscule compared to the value as a whole. I don't think the courts have ever taken such a fact into consideration. So I see 3 and 4 going against, 2 is neutral, and 1 is neutral to against. I think fair use is clearly not the case. But now we've gotten into pure opinion really, so we might as well agree to disagree.
I'll be sure to try to get a juror like you if I ever do get sued for my DeCSS escapade, though.
And the ironic thing is that, as a Quaker, I would feel it to be of the utmost importance to listen to both sides without prejudice and to value both sides equally as I weight the facts.
Yeah, but if you're a prosecutor, especially if you have a good case, you don't want to take any chances of having a hung jury. I wonder what the statistics are, but my guess would be that most court cases are probably won by the prosecution. So as a prosector you're generally not looking for an exceptional juror. Just one who is going to look at the overwhelming evidence and convict. Not one who's going to second guess the legal system.
In other words, yes, you'd probably make a great juror. But it's still probably the right decision for one of the two lawyers to drop you.
Huh? I never said the jury is there to do what the judge wants. But they do receive instructions from the judge on how to interpret the law, and these instructions shouldn't be second guessed. Jurors are there to decide issues of fact, not issues of law.
I think the key is to have open-minded jurors. And computer geeks who think they know everything (and rarely do, especially about the law) are probably not a good selection.
The law is logical if you've studied it inside and out and know all the reasons behind every little inconsistency. But if you haven't, you can't really make sense of it, so you just have to buy whatever the judge instructs you to.
Me: I borrowed a friend's South Park DVD, copied it to my hard drive, and returned the DVD to my friend.
If you are going to REPEATEDLY ignore adjacent sentences then there's not much point discussing it with you. You did it three times last post, and twice more in this one.
Whoa, chill out. If I ignored a sentence of yours it was accidental.
I'd say there's a good chance that whatever you claim you did was not in fact a copyright violation. And if it was, you could have done it without DeCSS. Not that it matters, you can use a photocopier or VCR to violate copyright. Or even a pencil.
Well, it uncertain is what you did was actually a copyright violation, but even assuming it is, my next sentence certainly applies - you certainly could have done it without DeCSS.
How could I have copied the DVD to my hard drive without DeCSS? And how is it uncertain that what I did was actually a copyright violation? Are you claiming that it's fair use?
I don't know how many copies of the software they sold, but apparently the people who bought it had some use for it other than violating copyright.
Me: Or maybe the people just didn't get caught. That's why the DMCA exists in the first place. It's really hard to catch copyright infringers.
Perhaps you didn't realize their customer list includes "Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies". So yeah, apparently their software was being used for perfectly legitimate purposes.
Me: Apparently the courts found otherwise.
What possibly makes you say that? They ruled the software was illegal under the DMCA. They NEVER said that it wasn't being used for legitimate purposes.
If the primary purpose of software is to break the law, I wouldn't call that a legitimate purpose. Semantics, I guess.
Spam doesn't count as that "legally", or so I've been told many, many times when I've tried to pursue that avenue of recourse.
Right. That's because spam isn't theft of services and resources.
Please see the original post, if CC companies would allow us to charge a spam clean up fee and MAKE IT STICK, then a large part of thise problem would go away.
Perhaps, but CC companies aren't really bonding services. That's what you're looking for, really.
BTW the 500 dollar fee is what we charge for "spam clean up".
So, the best way to make a very good product is to have very good developers onboard, and the best way to get them onboard is to lure them with a very good product
There's two other ways. 1) do it yourself. 2) pay them.
If you think the rule is made up do the following. Call up any FBI field office nearest you. Complain that you had your walkman stolen by someone on ebay who didn't pay up. The crime occured across state lines. I'll bet the field officer tells you to go fill out a report at your local police station thank you and have a nice day. I wonder if your "fraud" case involved other people that had likewise been defrauded. I wonder what the total amount was? I wonder if it was over 10,000? Hmmmm.......
Proof by example? Even if your thought experiment turned out to be true, a single instance does not prove anything. Now if I had complained to them about a $9,999 theft maybe it would prove a little bit more.
In every post I have said that spam is bad, and that spam needs to be eliminated. Nowhere did I ever say that I spammed, allowed spam, or thought spam might be justified in some special case. You seem to be missing this point repeatedly.
No, I never said you spammed. I never said you liked spam.
You seem to be implying that "my business" is a spam haven. I have said in every single post that the opposite is the case and wished I had stronger laws to help me pursue legal remedies for those that violate our AUP. I'm not really sure where you got the idea that I have anything to do with a "spam haven". Is english your second laguage ?
I was really referring to a hypothetical ISP which does not collect any fine from spammers who break their AUP. You may or may not run such an ISP.
Since I don't spam, and I don't allow spam, what is blocking my e-mail going to do?
If you don't punish spammers who spam using your network, then you do allow spam. Anyone can say they don't allow spam. Talk is cheap.
The point of many previous posts is that spammers often use innocent third parties to send spam.
I assume you're talking about open relays? That happens sometimes, but from the spam I receive I've found it doesn't happen very often.
There will always be innocent third parties UNLESS there are REAL consequences for sending spam.
Exactly. That's why ISPs need to start enforcing their AUPs. They're the only ones who can do it. They're the ones who are being paid by the spammers. They're the ones who have a contractual agreement with the spammers. They're the ones who have the proof of the identity of the spammers.
That would be because your ignorant of the laws where I live. Unless the total dollar amount for the damages is over 5,000 USD, small claims court is your only legal avenue for recourse in a civil matter. Many states are the same in this regard.
That's very interesting (I'm not being sarcastic). Do you have any way to back up that claim? I thought small claims court was optional. I also thought that there was a limit to how many small claims court cases one could make per year. Of course, I looked it up, and I could find no such limitation.
Me: Then get a deposit, or do a credit check.
See previous posts regarding that
You said you had to be competitive. That's fine, but just remember you're not only competing for who is going to sign up for your service. You're also competing for who is going to accept mail from you.
You seem unclear on the concept. A spam clean up fee is charged to any user that spams. This fee is in the AUP and the moneis are used to cover the adminsitrative costs of removing the spammers, and any mail he/she may have sent that is still in the queue.
So you add it to your profits.
Now looking at your second bizzare suggestion, since we aren't the spammers, and we don't send the spam how would we identify the spammed? If we can't collect the clean up fee (see first post) then how would we distribute these imaginary moneis?
Here I was talking about a hypothetical situation where fees were collected.
For every 500 customers we get, perhaps 1 will try to spam. Do the f*cking math. Who is going to put down a 500 deposit for a 19.95 dial up?
Where did you get the $500 deposit figure from? As for who is willing to put down the deposit, the answer is simple. Those who need to be allowed to send more than just a few emails a day.
Would you? (yeah right!).
As long as we earned interest, my business would certainly be willing to do that. As for my personal account, I'd be willing to be limited to sending only 5 emails per day.
Why don't you start by black listing the following providers who have the same policy. MSN, AOL, earthlink, mindspring, verizon, bellsouth, southwest bell, time warner, shaw cable, cox cable, UUnet, Sprint, Level Three, The university system of NY state (SUNY). Let me know if it helps.
Show me these policies. AOL (and time warner which is the same company) I am certain sues spammers.
See previous paragraph, and let me again remind you of the age old saying bullshit
I don't understand then. You say that ISPs don't have the right to pursue spammers, but they clearly have a right to pursue those who break their contracts. What more do you want?
The only thing I want my govt to do is give me the legal right to pursue people for theft of services and resources (which spamming is) or allow me to break the spammers knee caps.
Theft of services and resources is already illegal, isn't it?
Ahh, I see, Let me ask you, what exactly are you asking ISP's to do?
Enforce their AUPs and/or give permission and information to the spammed to enforce them for them.
Ahh wait I get it, you are saying "ISP's that harbor them", and "ISPs that profit from spammers". I get it. You don't mean me.
Unless you're going to fill in details I'd say there's a good chance that whatever you claim you did was not in fact a copyright violation.
I borrowed a friend's South Park DVD, copied it to my hard drive, and returned the DVD to my friend.
Perhaps you didn't realize their customer list includes "Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies". So yeah, apparently their software was being used for perfectly legitimate purposes.
Apparently the courts found otherwise.
Perhaps you missed the case (pre-DMCA), but the "primary purpose" of VCR's was to commit copyright violation.
I guess you missed the case. The "primary purpose" was ruled to be timeshifting.
Copyright protection does not exist in fair use. DMCA makes fair use illegal.
The DMCA specifically makes fair use legal. "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."
If you're a lawyer, the best way to support the FSF is to support stronger copyright laws. Why? Because the stronger the copyright laws are, the more money the FSF code is worth!
The FBI got involved because of the credit card company.
So? I've shown that there's at least one exception to your $10,000 rule. So your rule which you made up is bullshit.
You obviously live in some world where you don't have to compete. The profit to provide dial up is already very, very slim. To do what you ask puts ANY company providing dial up service in an anti-competitive posistion. You can't pursue spammers if your out of business.
If you want your business to profit off spam then fine, but I'm blocking your email. When enough people do the same, maybe then you'll be forced to stop being a spam haven in order to compete.
A little education on how small claims court works.
I never said anything about small claims court.
If you win a judgement, you don't automatically collect.
Right, that's why you did the credit check before you accepted the person.
No company I have ever worked for, or currently work will ever be a haven for spammers. You spam you get kicked off. We charge a spam clean up fee for wasting our time. The problem is that we can't collect the spam clean up fee.
Then get a deposit, or do a credit check. Or at least give me the name of the spammer so I can sue him/her myself.
I wonder, do you pass that spam cleanup fee on to the people who received the spam, or do you add it to your profits?
It's exceedingly difficult for a company or person to pursue action in the real world against such spammers, i.e. there is no real penalty for these scum. They will simply surface somewhere else after you have kicked them off and added their name and phone number to your "people we don't do business with" database.
Yep, and that's the problem. You collect the monthly fee, they spam me, and you pocket the monthly fee. You get paid, the spammer gets off scott free, and I get nothing. Again, what are your IP addresses so I can add you to my blacklist?
Small time individual spammers are a problem because they are lots of them.
Please back up that assertion. Most spam I get seems to be from big time spammers, not small time ones.
A company has very little recourse against them (Some states are better than others).
Once again, that's the company's own fault! If a customer is potentially a liability for you, you should be giving them unlimited access accounts without doing a credit check or taking a deposit.
If you want to take the cheap route, that's perfectly fine, but give me your IP addresses so I can blacklist your servers.
Unless you can make penalties stick for these people in the real world, SPAM will continue to be a problem.
You can make penalties stick. It's really easy and simple to do.
Until we are given the right to pursue these thieves, we must simply make their life more difficult.
ISPs do have the right to pursue spammers! They're just not willing to spend the money to do so.
Oh, you meant "until the government spends taxpayer money to pursue these theives on behalf of the ISPs?" Sorry, it's not my problem, I'm not paying for it.
I think we both agree on what needs to be done, the difference is that I have tried to do it and you haven't.
What is it that we agree on? What needs to be done is that people need to stop accepting "we've deleted their account" from the ISPs which are profiting off the spammers. We need to take the George Bush approach to spam reduction. "We will make no distinction between the spammers who send us the spam and the ISPs which harbor them."
Slashdot Mirror
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." --Abraham Lincoln
I see the humor in the last post but no one can own the moon
Suuuure. That's what the Native Americans said about the Americas.
No, the DMCA is quite unusual for having a willfulness element [politechbot.com], which goes to the defendant's knowledge of the law rather than guilty conduct.
That's really not that unusual for the type of criminal law the DMCA covers. Criminal copyright infringement also must be done "willfully." Also, it's arguable whether or not the willfulness element really means knowledge of the law itself. That's just one judges interpretation at the moment.
I agree that Staples is not directly relevant.
How would you propose to fix it?
The law is complicated because life is complicated.
You would think a reason for the defense to pick you would be recognised by the prosecutor as a reason not to.
Occasionally ignorance of the law is a defense -- the DMCA oddly enough.
Only to the criminal parts of the DMCA, and it's not really that odd. Any law is going to have a certain level of mens rea required, and because the DMCA is inherently a law invented by congress (and not a common sense rule such as murder laws), the level required is quite high.
I certainly agree that it is within a jury's power to refuse a conviction even if the law was broken. But it's likewise within their power to convict someone even when the law was not broken.
Neither are the DUTY of the jury. The jury is there to decide issues of fact, not whether or not they agree with the law.
It was a few posts back, but my point was that the DMCA must be and is being interpreted horribly.
You mean by slashdotters? The EFF? Other than that, I don't see how it's being interpreted horribly at all.
According to that supreme court ruling the test was whether the item in question had "substantial non-infringing uses". Under the DMCA all sorts of things that pass the "substantial non-infringing uses" test are being declared illegal.
That ruling was applied to contributory copyright law though, not the DMCA. The DMCA has a different test.
Making DeCSS illegal is like making VCRs illegal.
Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean Congress can't do it.
*If* things like DeCSS are brought to the supreme court and *if* they stand by their previous decision then I think these things would be declared legal. That bad interpretation of the DMCA would overruled. It would also make that section of the DMCA mostly useless.
Perhaps, but I don't see the Supreme Court overturning a case like DeCSS. And neither did 2600, which is why they didn't appeal.
Maybe there what copyright infrigment that wasn't caught. Maybe there wasn't. But there definitely WAS legitimate use. The DMCA outlaws both.
There definately was copyright infringement that wasn't caught. At least one instance was committed by me. The DMCA does not outlaw legitimate use. It outlaws the distribution of the product to someone who might then use it legitimately. Big difference.
Me: How could I have copied the DVD to my hard drive without DeCSS?
The same way you copy any file. Open a window to the DVD drive, point to it, hold the mouse down and drag it onto your desktop. That makes a completely functional copy. And you can send it over the internet to a friend and he can watch it on his DVD player. All without DeCSS.
My friends' DVD players doesn't play hard drive files. So I'd have to buy a multi layer DVD burner for tens of thousands of dollars.
So instead I use DeCSS, and then I can watch the movie on my computer.
I am completely serious. If you have any programmer-type friends go and ask them. The file is encrypted, but encryption does not prevent copying or viewing. Any player that can play the original WILL play the copy. Calling it copyprotection or copyright protection is a complete deception. They have been LYING to you.
Encryption prevents viewing. Any player that can play the original does so after decrypting. It may or may not be deceptive to call it "copyprotection or copyright protection." That's semantics. But it certainly is effective in forcing people to pay for the product. Without DeCSS I would have probably paid for that copy of South Park. With DeCSS, I didn't.
I never said the "primary purpose" was legitimate. I said it was being used for legitimate purposes. (You said the court said otherwise.)
Apparently I misread something you said. My apologies.
I'm also saying that based on all the evidence presented in court the "most common purpose" was legitimate, there wasn't a single shred of evidence of illegal use. And that is exactly what I meant when I said the DMCA is intrepreted horribly. How the heck can the the "primary purpose" be an illegal one when the "most common purpose" was legitimate?
There are three possibilities. The product:
In the DeCSS case it may or may not be true that the product has a purpose other than circumvention, but that's irrelevant because it was shown that the product was designed primarily for circumvention.
I specificly said we could assume your claim to have used DeCSS to violate copyright WAS a violation, any result either way to the following is immaterial to my argument.
Absolutely agreed.
Point (4) may lean to fair use also. By making a single personal copy the impact is no more than the loss of a single sale, a pretty miniscule effect on the market value of the work as a whole. It is also far from certain that it really would mean a lost sale.
I state definitively that it would. I don't see how it matters that the loss is miniscule compared to the value as a whole. I don't think the courts have ever taken such a fact into consideration. So I see 3 and 4 going against, 2 is neutral, and 1 is neutral to against. I think fair use is clearly not the case. But now we've gotten into pure opinion really, so we might as well agree to disagree.
I'll be sure to try to get a juror like you if I ever do get sued for my DeCSS escapade, though.
The exact details probably just got lost somewhere along the telephone game from the person who taught the lawyer to the lawyer to Stan to Slashdot.
And the ironic thing is that, as a Quaker, I would feel it to be of the utmost importance to listen to both sides without prejudice and to value both sides equally as I weight the facts.
Yeah, but if you're a prosecutor, especially if you have a good case, you don't want to take any chances of having a hung jury. I wonder what the statistics are, but my guess would be that most court cases are probably won by the prosecution. So as a prosector you're generally not looking for an exceptional juror. Just one who is going to look at the overwhelming evidence and convict. Not one who's going to second guess the legal system.
In other words, yes, you'd probably make a great juror. But it's still probably the right decision for one of the two lawyers to drop you.
Huh? I never said the jury is there to do what the judge wants. But they do receive instructions from the judge on how to interpret the law, and these instructions shouldn't be second guessed. Jurors are there to decide issues of fact, not issues of law.
I think the key is to have open-minded jurors. And computer geeks who think they know everything (and rarely do, especially about the law) are probably not a good selection.
The law is logical if you've studied it inside and out and know all the reasons behind every little inconsistency. But if you haven't, you can't really make sense of it, so you just have to buy whatever the judge instructs you to.
Your lawyer neighbor is probably right. But why develop a complex?
of DirecTV DSL gateways, of course.
I'll buy from whatever company advertises the least expensively.
The government is now giving a free monopoly to the broadcast television companies and now they're even letting them charge for it!
Courts ruled the "primary purpose" of VCR's was to commit copyright violation. The supreme court then overturned the case.
OK, you're right, I didn't understand what you were saying. Probably because your statement doesn't have a point.
Me: I borrowed a friend's South Park DVD, copied it to my hard drive, and returned the DVD to my friend.
If you are going to REPEATEDLY ignore adjacent sentences then there's not much point discussing it with you. You did it three times last post, and twice more in this one.
Whoa, chill out. If I ignored a sentence of yours it was accidental.
I'd say there's a good chance that whatever you claim you did was not in fact a copyright violation. And if it was, you could have done it without DeCSS. Not that it matters, you can use a photocopier or VCR to violate copyright. Or even a pencil.
Well, it uncertain is what you did was actually a copyright violation, but even assuming it is, my next sentence certainly applies - you certainly could have done it without DeCSS.
How could I have copied the DVD to my hard drive without DeCSS? And how is it uncertain that what I did was actually a copyright violation? Are you claiming that it's fair use?
I don't know how many copies of the software they sold, but apparently the people who bought it had some use for it other than violating copyright.
Me: Or maybe the people just didn't get caught. That's why the DMCA exists in the first place. It's really hard to catch copyright infringers.
Perhaps you didn't realize their customer list includes "Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies". So yeah, apparently their software was being used for perfectly legitimate purposes.
Me: Apparently the courts found otherwise.
What possibly makes you say that? They ruled the software was illegal under the DMCA. They NEVER said that it wasn't being used for legitimate purposes.
If the primary purpose of software is to break the law, I wouldn't call that a legitimate purpose. Semantics, I guess.
Spam doesn't count as that "legally", or so I've been told many, many times when I've tried to pursue that avenue of recourse.
Right. That's because spam isn't theft of services and resources.
Please see the original post, if CC companies would allow us to charge a spam clean up fee and MAKE IT STICK, then a large part of thise problem would go away.
Perhaps, but CC companies aren't really bonding services. That's what you're looking for, really.
BTW the 500 dollar fee is what we charge for "spam clean up".
Sounds a little excessive.
So, the best way to make a very good product is to have very good developers onboard, and the best way to get them onboard is to lure them with a very good product
There's two other ways. 1) do it yourself. 2) pay them.
If you think the rule is made up do the following. Call up any FBI field office nearest you. Complain that you had your walkman stolen by someone on ebay who didn't pay up. The crime occured across state lines. I'll bet the field officer tells you to go fill out a report at your local police station thank you and have a nice day. I wonder if your "fraud" case involved other people that had likewise been defrauded. I wonder what the total amount was? I wonder if it was over 10,000? Hmmmm.......
Proof by example? Even if your thought experiment turned out to be true, a single instance does not prove anything. Now if I had complained to them about a $9,999 theft maybe it would prove a little bit more.
In every post I have said that spam is bad, and that spam needs to be eliminated. Nowhere did I ever say that I spammed, allowed spam, or thought spam might be justified in some special case. You seem to be missing this point repeatedly.
No, I never said you spammed. I never said you liked spam.
You seem to be implying that "my business" is a spam haven. I have said in every single post that the opposite is the case and wished I had stronger laws to help me pursue legal remedies for those that violate our AUP. I'm not really sure where you got the idea that I have anything to do with a "spam haven". Is english your second laguage ?
I was really referring to a hypothetical ISP which does not collect any fine from spammers who break their AUP. You may or may not run such an ISP.
Since I don't spam, and I don't allow spam, what is blocking my e-mail going to do?
If you don't punish spammers who spam using your network, then you do allow spam. Anyone can say they don't allow spam. Talk is cheap.
The point of many previous posts is that spammers often use innocent third parties to send spam.
I assume you're talking about open relays? That happens sometimes, but from the spam I receive I've found it doesn't happen very often.
There will always be innocent third parties UNLESS there are REAL consequences for sending spam.
Exactly. That's why ISPs need to start enforcing their AUPs. They're the only ones who can do it. They're the ones who are being paid by the spammers. They're the ones who have a contractual agreement with the spammers. They're the ones who have the proof of the identity of the spammers.
That would be because your ignorant of the laws where I live. Unless the total dollar amount for the damages is over 5,000 USD, small claims court is your only legal avenue for recourse in a civil matter. Many states are the same in this regard.
That's very interesting (I'm not being sarcastic). Do you have any way to back up that claim? I thought small claims court was optional. I also thought that there was a limit to how many small claims court cases one could make per year. Of course, I looked it up, and I could find no such limitation.
Me: Then get a deposit, or do a credit check.
See previous posts regarding that
You said you had to be competitive. That's fine, but just remember you're not only competing for who is going to sign up for your service. You're also competing for who is going to accept mail from you.
You seem unclear on the concept. A spam clean up fee is charged to any user that spams. This fee is in the AUP and the moneis are used to cover the adminsitrative costs of removing the spammers, and any mail he/she may have sent that is still in the queue.
So you add it to your profits.
Now looking at your second bizzare suggestion, since we aren't the spammers, and we don't send the spam how would we identify the spammed? If we can't collect the clean up fee (see first post) then how would we distribute these imaginary moneis?
Here I was talking about a hypothetical situation where fees were collected.
For every 500 customers we get, perhaps 1 will try to spam. Do the f*cking math. Who is going to put down a 500 deposit for a 19.95 dial up?
Where did you get the $500 deposit figure from? As for who is willing to put down the deposit, the answer is simple. Those who need to be allowed to send more than just a few emails a day.
Would you? (yeah right!).
As long as we earned interest, my business would certainly be willing to do that. As for my personal account, I'd be willing to be limited to sending only 5 emails per day.
Why don't you start by black listing the following providers who have the same policy. MSN, AOL, earthlink, mindspring, verizon, bellsouth, southwest bell, time warner, shaw cable, cox cable, UUnet, Sprint, Level Three, The university system of NY state (SUNY). Let me know if it helps.
Show me these policies. AOL (and time warner which is the same company) I am certain sues spammers.
See previous paragraph, and let me again remind you of the age old saying bullshit
I don't understand then. You say that ISPs don't have the right to pursue spammers, but they clearly have a right to pursue those who break their contracts. What more do you want?
The only thing I want my govt to do is give me the legal right to pursue people for theft of services and resources (which spamming is) or allow me to break the spammers knee caps.
Theft of services and resources is already illegal, isn't it?
Ahh, I see, Let me ask you, what exactly are you asking ISP's to do?
Enforce their AUPs and/or give permission and information to the spammed to enforce them for them.
Ahh wait I get it, you are saying "ISP's that harbor them", and "ISPs that profit from spammers". I get it. You don't mean me.
Perhaps I don't.
Unless you're going to fill in details I'd say there's a good chance that whatever you claim you did was not in fact a copyright violation.
I borrowed a friend's South Park DVD, copied it to my hard drive, and returned the DVD to my friend.
Perhaps you didn't realize their customer list includes "Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies". So yeah, apparently their software was being used for perfectly legitimate purposes.
Apparently the courts found otherwise.
Perhaps you missed the case (pre-DMCA), but the "primary purpose" of VCR's was to commit copyright violation.
I guess you missed the case. The "primary purpose" was ruled to be timeshifting.
Copyright protection does not exist in fair use. DMCA makes fair use illegal.
The DMCA specifically makes fair use legal. "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."
If you're a lawyer, the best way to support the FSF is to support stronger copyright laws. Why? Because the stronger the copyright laws are, the more money the FSF code is worth!
The FBI got involved because of the credit card company.
So? I've shown that there's at least one exception to your $10,000 rule. So your rule which you made up is bullshit.
You obviously live in some world where you don't have to compete. The profit to provide dial up is already very, very slim. To do what you ask puts ANY company providing dial up service in an anti-competitive posistion. You can't pursue spammers if your out of business.
If you want your business to profit off spam then fine, but I'm blocking your email. When enough people do the same, maybe then you'll be forced to stop being a spam haven in order to compete.
A little education on how small claims court works.
I never said anything about small claims court.
If you win a judgement, you don't automatically collect.
Right, that's why you did the credit check before you accepted the person.
No company I have ever worked for, or currently work will ever be a haven for spammers. You spam you get kicked off. We charge a spam clean up fee for wasting our time. The problem is that we can't collect the spam clean up fee.
Then get a deposit, or do a credit check. Or at least give me the name of the spammer so I can sue him/her myself.
I wonder, do you pass that spam cleanup fee on to the people who received the spam, or do you add it to your profits?
It's exceedingly difficult for a company or person to pursue action in the real world against such spammers, i.e. there is no real penalty for these scum. They will simply surface somewhere else after you have kicked them off and added their name and phone number to your "people we don't do business with" database.
Yep, and that's the problem. You collect the monthly fee, they spam me, and you pocket the monthly fee. You get paid, the spammer gets off scott free, and I get nothing. Again, what are your IP addresses so I can add you to my blacklist?
Small time individual spammers are a problem because they are lots of them.
Please back up that assertion. Most spam I get seems to be from big time spammers, not small time ones.
A company has very little recourse against them (Some states are better than others).
Once again, that's the company's own fault! If a customer is potentially a liability for you, you should be giving them unlimited access accounts without doing a credit check or taking a deposit.
If you want to take the cheap route, that's perfectly fine, but give me your IP addresses so I can blacklist your servers.
Unless you can make penalties stick for these people in the real world, SPAM will continue to be a problem.
You can make penalties stick. It's really easy and simple to do.
Until we are given the right to pursue these thieves, we must simply make their life more difficult.
ISPs do have the right to pursue spammers! They're just not willing to spend the money to do so.
Oh, you meant "until the government spends taxpayer money to pursue these theives on behalf of the ISPs?" Sorry, it's not my problem, I'm not paying for it.
I think we both agree on what needs to be done, the difference is that I have tried to do it and you haven't.
What is it that we agree on? What needs to be done is that people need to stop accepting "we've deleted their account" from the ISPs which are profiting off the spammers. We need to take the George Bush approach to spam reduction. "We will make no distinction between the spammers who send us the spam and the ISPs which harbor them."
Dropping anything with an 1- prefix phone number in the message body would probably help to =)
I've found the US phone numbers tend to indicate non-spam, rather than spam.