Fax.com might not have been doing something that made people feel all warm and gooey inside, but it was contributing to the economy and giving people valuable employment.
They were breaking the law. Intentionally. This isn't the first time they've been busted.
The law was created because fax-spammers use other peoples machines, paper, ink, and phonelines to send them unwanted crap. Fax.com knows they are breaking the law, and that the vast majority don't want it.
They are "contributing to the economy" only in the same way that email spammers are contributing - by stealing resources.
You mention a free market, but don't seem to understand what that is. If I decide not to do business from Walmart, or Microsoft, or whoever, and a lot of other people make that same choice, then that company loses business. If lots of people do business with that company, they get a lot of business. That's a free market. Fax spammers don't have permission. They aren't wanted. They won't stop just because you want them to stop. It's only free for them. It's not free for the guy who pays the bills and is forced to keep getting all their ads.
Now if you want to leave it up to the general public, and keep the lawyers and government out of it, that's fine with me. But it has to work both ways. If the law can't say "Don't send those faxes to people who don't want them" then when you send your fucking faxes, I should be allowed to burn down your fucking building. What's that? Burning your building is against the law? Oh. You want no laywers/no government as long as it means that you get to be an asshole to everyone else - but as soon as people fight back, you're gonna scream "More Government! Stop The Madness!".
The people who advertise through spam are fly-by-night operations.
The majority are fly-by-night conmen. But not all. For instance, I received spam email from T-Mobile recently. I complained, and received more spam a couple of days later.
My main point is that some otherwise legitimate companies do send spam. My secondary point is that if you are spending money on T-Mobile based cellular service, you are supporting a spammer.
Actually, as a _legitimate_ commercial mailer, the company I work for is pretty excited about the new act. Mostly, it gets us away from the stupidly crazy California law (which claims authority over email which merely passes through California, even if it is neither the origin or the destination - just if the packets go through there).
Legitimate email marketers don't spam. They send opt-in emails. That's all the California law asked for. If you were worried about the "stupidly crazy California law" which asked you not to spam, then you are not a legitimate marketer, you are a spammer.
a) Ticket for talking while driving?
That's illegal, and I personally think you're an asshole for doing it
You may not like it, but that doesn't make it illegal. I don't know where you live, but in the US, I haven't heard of anyplace where it is illegal. A few states have laws requiring use of a hands-free device when using a cell phone while driving. Most states don't even have that much regulation.
NY Times should respect my right not to get spammed to death.
I signed up with NYTimes several years ago. I set up an email address just for them. I receive their "Todays Headlines" emails every day, just like I receive similar messages from SlashDot. They've never spammed me. I've never received anything to the email address I gave them except for the mail I asked for. I've never heard of them sending spam.
In other words, the AC who claims they spam is lying.
here were others (on usenet and the services' own forums) echoing the same feeling...I don't suppose you believe them either.
I haven't heard about them before. Prior to this, all I had was your say-so. You have a new account, you post something that is hard to believe about BrightMail in a thread about how Snotty says he has a pink-contract with them which they deny, and you give no evidence.
Now you say that it's been discussed before (but without a URL so I can read that discussion) and also say that the problem may not be with Brightmail. You also said that you went through a reseller - but you didn't say who it was. Seems to me that if you're willing to accuse Brightmail, you should be willing to accuse the reseller, unless you have some evidence (again, which you haven't mentioned) that it was brightmail and not the reseller.
Pardon my sceptisism, but spammers lie, over and over. And the claims you've made sound incredibly fishy. Brightmail would be cutting their own throat. They have a *lot* of users, and it seems unlikely that they could do what you claim for long without getting a lot of press - and losing a lot of business. They would likely open themselves to lawsuits, too.
I keep up with spam news much more than most people, and haven't heard any such allegations - except from Richter claiming he has a pink contract.
I've been running searches through groups.google.com trying to find the usenet discussions that you claim took place. I'm not having any luck - but there are a *lot* of posts which mention Brightmail, and you haven't even mentioned which group the discussion took place in. If you're for real, then please post a URL. If you claim that google didn't archive any of the messages, or the replies, or any discussion about it at all, but that it still took place, then you'll continue to look like the troll I first took you for. Post the URL, and at the very least you *won't* look like Snotty Scotty slinging lies, and I for one will trust you more than I do now.
I see your point, now. I didn't realize that there was no mention in this article about the lawsuit. Slashdot did mention it in a previous story, and I was certainly already aware of it, so it just didn't sink in that it wasn't mentioned this time.
I still believe that Snotty just told his "prospective partners" because he's losing business following the lawsuit. I find Brightmails claims much more likely than Richter's.
If it also possible that AngryShroom, who first posted to SlashDot on 12/20/03 (the same day that this article came out) is in fact Snotty Richter. These are very serious claims, and I find them hard to believe. The fact that the account that posted them seems to have no more history than your average AC makes me even more suspicious.
...OptInRealBig spammer Scott Richter isn't "looking for attention"...
No? See the NYTimes article
, where Snotty is quoted as saying this:
Messing with us is a big mistake," he said. "The more press I get, even bad press, the bigger we get.
Tat sounds like he *is* asking for publicity, to me. I'm sure he would prefer that there were no lawsuit. I'd prefer that he was packaged up and sent via USPS ground delivery to Nigeria, without any airholes in the box.
However, I know (from first hand experience) that Scott runs a pretty legitimate business. He respects opt-outs.
Opt out is not a reasonable solution. I receive 400-500 spams every day. I'm not going to waste time trying to opt out of all of those.
He's sent spam for porno sites, enlargement pills, mortgages, and many different "get rich" schemes. He's bounced around from IP to IP to keep people from blocking him. Does a legitimate business need to do that?
You are either outright trolling, or you are seriously deluded.
That's like blaming Ford because a burglar used one to drive to the house he robbed.
MS isn't selling software to send spam or to harvest addresses. Their OS is quite popular, so I'm sure it's used by some spammers, but any decent programmer using any other OS could still create spamware. Do you really think that no spam is sent using Linux systems? Apple?
Spammers *are* real criminals. They steal time and money from millions of people every day. They hack machines. They forge addresses. Pretending that they are nice decent people is stupid.
I believe you. After all, mortgage companies wouldn't ever stoop to spamming...
You did no research on the company, you were stupid enough to believe a spammer when they told you "It's a targeted opt in list" of a million people, and (worst of all) you paid money to a spamhouse, which encourages them to continue. Sorry, but it sounds like you're part of the problem.
In a previous slashdot post, I quoted from their FAQ page. You'll find it here.
You may want to read the whole post, but here is the quote that I took off of his FAQ page.
Vanity domain owners who are unwilling to accommodate the requirements of SPF are, in a way, due to their principled inertia, part of the spam problem. What is greater: the pain of everyone who is presently flooded with spam, or the pain of the vanity domain owners who will no longer be able to forge their own address?
Those aren't my words, they are his.
I'd love a way to get rid of the spam - I'm getting 500 or so a day. I'd love a way to keep spammers from forging my domain - that's happened several times, and over the last week I've gotten over 300 bounces from an overseas, foreign language (chinese?) pr0n site which has been spamming using my domain.
According to Meng Weng Wong, I'm forging my own address. Bullshit.
I joined that SPF-Announce email list on 7/15/03. I've received two mails since then. One on 12/11/03 saying that they had created a SPF-Developers list. One on 12/16/03 which mentioned this thread on slashdot. I wrote to him then asking if he was still claiming that I'm forging my own domain and that I'm part of the problem. No response so far - but that was just yesterday, so it's too early to call.
Scream and whine about "smoking crack, get a clue" if you want. I don't claim to understand his system, and I'm not an admin - but I know what he posted on his site about what it would do to vanity domains.
It seems to me that copmanyies very often sit on a patent until their 'invention' becomes very popular before enforcing the patent
An example: A few years ago, British Telecom claimed to have invented and patented hyperlinks on the web, and were going to start charging ISP's for using their technology.
You'll have to cut-n-paste - I didn't want BT to sue me.:^)
I never heard what happened with that case, and everything I found via Google is old news. If anyone has a URL with an update, I'd like to know about it.
Opt-in only is the most retarded idea I've ever heard for the problem of spam aside from the email tax (buhahahahaha). It's throwing out the baby, the bathwater, and a whole bunch of other shit to solve a comparably minor problem.
Spamfighters on NANAE have used the terms "consorscient" and "consorscience" to describe mail that may be bulk (though it's normally more one-on-one). That's what you are trying to describe.
I was surprised that when I plugged it into Google, there were zero hits.
Here is a link to the
groups.google.com archive of a post in NANAE about it.
I'll cut-n-paste the definition below.
Consorscience - (L. _consortium_, partnership, + _scientia_,
knowledge) n.
1. The act of sharing information known to be of mutual interest,
relevant, and specific to all persons participating, and/or strongly
and reasonably believed to be desirable to each recipient based on a
common purpose of intimacy or shared activities or pastimes, such that
a mutually enjoyable dialogue is likely to ensue between participants.
2. A state of sharing such information.
consorscient - n. 1. One who participates in consorscience. adj.
2.
Engaging in consorscience.
3. Having the qualities of mutually
interesting information and common purpose inherent in consorscience.
consorscienate - v. 1. to engage or participate in consorscience.
Spam is about quantity not just context. If someone sent 30 million people the same or similar email then that is spam.
So you claim that the emails that SlashDot sends telling me about the new stories they've published is spam, because the
sent it to a lot of other people? Nonsense.
You claim that when NYTimes sends me their daily news update, it's spam? Nonsense.
Now if they sent it to the same number of people, but those people had *not* asked for it, then it would certainly be spam. But if 30 million people ask for it, sending it to them doesn't make it spam.
The guy (I assume - Meng Wong something, I think) that designed SPF claims that anyone who runs a vanity domain is "part of the spam problem". He claims that I am forging my address when I send spam using a whitis.com address.
His plan may work fine for big companies, but if you don' thave a 24 hour connection on a static IP, you can't run your own server. And if you can't run your own server, he claims you're a forger and a spammer.
Slashdot Mirror
They were breaking the law. Intentionally. This isn't the first time they've been busted.
The law was created because fax-spammers use other peoples machines, paper, ink, and phonelines to send them unwanted crap. Fax.com knows they are breaking the law, and that the vast majority don't want it.
They are "contributing to the economy" only in the same way that email spammers are contributing - by stealing resources.
You mention a free market, but don't seem to understand what that is. If I decide not to do business from Walmart, or Microsoft, or whoever, and a lot of other people make that same choice, then that company loses business. If lots of people do business with that company, they get a lot of business. That's a free market. Fax spammers don't have permission. They aren't wanted. They won't stop just because you want them to stop. It's only free for them. It's not free for the guy who pays the bills and is forced to keep getting all their ads.
Now if you want to leave it up to the general public, and keep the lawyers and government out of it, that's fine with me. But it has to work both ways. If the law can't say "Don't send those faxes to people who don't want them" then when you send your fucking faxes, I should be allowed to burn down your fucking building. What's that? Burning your building is against the law? Oh. You want no laywers/no government as long as it means that you get to be an asshole to everyone else - but as soon as people fight back, you're gonna scream "More Government! Stop The Madness!".
In summary, you're an idiot.
The majority are fly-by-night conmen. But not all. For instance, I received spam email from T-Mobile recently. I complained, and received more spam a couple of days later.
My main point is that some otherwise legitimate companies do send spam. My secondary point is that if you are spending money on T-Mobile based cellular service, you are supporting a spammer.
Legitimate email marketers don't spam. They send opt-in emails. That's all the California law asked for. If you were worried about the "stupidly crazy California law" which asked you not to spam, then you are not a legitimate marketer, you are a spammer.
If God had meant for us to run around nude, we would have been born that way.
That's illegal, and I personally think you're an asshole for doing it
You may not like it, but that doesn't make it illegal. I don't know where you live, but in the US, I haven't heard of anyplace where it is illegal. A few states have laws requiring use of a hands-free device when using a cell phone while driving. Most states don't even have that much regulation.
Seeing your sig in this discussion reminded me that the Dean campaign has a history of sending spam.
If the relative sent millions of emails to people who didn't ask for it, yes, it is spam. What part of "bulk" do you not understand?
I signed up with NYTimes several years ago. I set up an email address just for them. I receive their "Todays Headlines" emails every day, just like I receive similar messages from SlashDot. They've never spammed me. I've never received anything to the email address I gave them except for the mail I asked for. I've never heard of them sending spam.
In other words, the AC who claims they spam is lying.
I haven't heard about them before. Prior to this, all I had was your say-so. You have a new account, you post something that is hard to believe about BrightMail in a thread about how Snotty says he has a pink-contract with them which they deny, and you give no evidence.
Now you say that it's been discussed before (but without a URL so I can read that discussion) and also say that the problem may not be with Brightmail. You also said that you went through a reseller - but you didn't say who it was. Seems to me that if you're willing to accuse Brightmail, you should be willing to accuse the reseller, unless you have some evidence (again, which you haven't mentioned) that it was brightmail and not the reseller.
Pardon my sceptisism, but spammers lie, over and over. And the claims you've made sound incredibly fishy. Brightmail would be cutting their own throat. They have a *lot* of users, and it seems unlikely that they could do what you claim for long without getting a lot of press - and losing a lot of business. They would likely open themselves to lawsuits, too.
I keep up with spam news much more than most people, and haven't heard any such allegations - except from Richter claiming he has a pink contract.
I've been running searches through groups.google.com trying to find the usenet discussions that you claim took place. I'm not having any luck - but there are a *lot* of posts which mention Brightmail, and you haven't even mentioned which group the discussion took place in. If you're for real, then please post a URL. If you claim that google didn't archive any of the messages, or the replies, or any discussion about it at all, but that it still took place, then you'll continue to look like the troll I first took you for. Post the URL, and at the very least you *won't* look like Snotty Scotty slinging lies, and I for one will trust you more than I do now.
Do you have any evidence to go with that claim, or are we just supposed to believe you?
I still believe that Snotty just told his "prospective partners" because he's losing business following the lawsuit. I find Brightmails claims much more likely than Richter's.
If it also possible that AngryShroom, who first posted to SlashDot on 12/20/03 (the same day that this article came out) is in fact Snotty Richter. These are very serious claims, and I find them hard to believe. The fact that the account that posted them seems to have no more history than your average AC makes me even more suspicious.
No? See the NYTimes article , where Snotty is quoted as saying this:
Tat sounds like he *is* asking for publicity, to me. I'm sure he would prefer that there were no lawsuit. I'd prefer that he was packaged up and sent via USPS ground delivery to Nigeria, without any airholes in the box.Opt out is not a reasonable solution. I receive 400-500 spams every day. I'm not going to waste time trying to opt out of all of those.
He's sent spam for porno sites, enlargement pills, mortgages, and many different "get rich" schemes. He's bounced around from IP to IP to keep people from blocking him. Does a legitimate business need to do that?
You are either outright trolling, or you are seriously deluded.
MS isn't selling software to send spam or to harvest addresses. Their OS is quite popular, so I'm sure it's used by some spammers, but any decent programmer using any other OS could still create spamware. Do you really think that no spam is sent using Linux systems? Apple?
You did no research on the company, you were stupid enough to believe a spammer when they told you "It's a targeted opt in list" of a million people, and (worst of all) you paid money to a spamhouse, which encourages them to continue. Sorry, but it sounds like you're part of the problem.
You may want to read the whole post, but here is the quote that I took off of his FAQ page.
Those aren't my words, they are his.I'd love a way to get rid of the spam - I'm getting 500 or so a day. I'd love a way to keep spammers from forging my domain - that's happened several times, and over the last week I've gotten over 300 bounces from an overseas, foreign language (chinese?) pr0n site which has been spamming using my domain.
According to Meng Weng Wong, I'm forging my own address. Bullshit.
I joined that SPF-Announce email list on 7/15/03. I've received two mails since then. One on 12/11/03 saying that they had created a SPF-Developers list. One on 12/16/03 which mentioned this thread on slashdot. I wrote to him then asking if he was still claiming that I'm forging my own domain and that I'm part of the problem. No response so far - but that was just yesterday, so it's too early to call.
Scream and whine about "smoking crack, get a clue" if you want. I don't claim to understand his system, and I'm not an admin - but I know what he posted on his site about what it would do to vanity domains.
An example: A few years ago, British Telecom claimed to have invented and patented hyperlinks on the web, and were going to start charging ISP's for using their technology.
http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/06 /26/000626hnbtpatent.xml
You'll have to cut-n-paste - I didn't want BT to sue me. :^)
I never heard what happened with that case, and everything I found via Google is old news. If anyone has a URL with an update, I'd like to know about it.
Nobody is complaining about an anti-spam law. The law being discussed does not outlaw spamming. It protects it.
You're confusing opt in with white listing.
I was surprised that when I plugged it into Google, there were zero hits.
Here is a link to the groups.google.com archive of a post in NANAE about it.
I'll cut-n-paste the definition below.
Consorscience - (L. _consortium_, partnership, + _scientia_, knowledge) n. 1. The act of sharing information known to be of mutual interest, relevant, and specific to all persons participating, and/or strongly and reasonably believed to be desirable to each recipient based on a common purpose of intimacy or shared activities or pastimes, such that a mutually enjoyable dialogue is likely to ensue between participants. 2. A state of sharing such information.
consorscient - n. 1. One who participates in consorscience. adj. 2. Engaging in consorscience.
3. Having the qualities of mutually interesting information and common purpose inherent in consorscience.
consorscienate - v. 1. to engage or participate in consorscience.
So you claim that the emails that SlashDot sends telling me about the new stories they've published is spam, because the sent it to a lot of other people? Nonsense.
You claim that when NYTimes sends me their daily news update, it's spam? Nonsense.
Now if they sent it to the same number of people, but those people had *not* asked for it, then it would certainly be spam. But if 30 million people ask for it, sending it to them doesn't make it spam.
His plan may work fine for big companies, but if you don' thave a 24 hour connection on a static IP, you can't run your own server. And if you can't run your own server, he claims you're a forger and a spammer.
SPF isn't going anywhere until he gets a clue.