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Fixing spam with the legal code
As the spam situation continues to worsen, more people are looking farther
afield for potential solutions. Recently there has been a new surge in
interest in legal solutions. When all else fails, pass a law.
One of the current approaches is the Lofgren law (backed by Lawrence Lessig) which would require all spam to carry an "ADV:" tag in the subject line. Recipients of untagged spam could report it to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and, perhaps, receive a portion of any fines collected from the spammer. The bill has numerous problems, including an overbroad definition of "spam" and the fact that the FTC already is unable to do anything about the vast number of complaints it receives. The state of Virginia has taken things further with a law that makes spamming with forged headers into a felony. Spammers could find themselves spending the next five years contemplating the benefits of anatomical enlargement in a prison cell. To qualify for this penalty, a spammer would have to send out at least 10,000 messages with forged headers in a single day. Creating legal tools to shut down spammers may be helpful in a few cases, but it is hard to see much long-term benefit coming from the legislative approach. What reason is there to believe that the legal system will be any more effective at shutting down spam than it is, say, at stopping the distribution of DeCSS? Even after an international campaign making even linking to DeCSS a crime, the DVD decryption software remains readily accessible. When all a spammer needs is a dialup connection and an open relay anywhere in the world, the effectiveness of any country's laws will be limited. (Log in to post comments)
Flawed analogy Posted May 1, 2003 6:12 UTC (Thu) by fyodor (subscriber, #3481) [Link] > What reason is there to believe that the legal system will> be any more effective at shutting down spam than it is, say, at > stopping the distribution of DeCSS? A better analogy is FAX spam. It is clearly illegal in the United States and that law has been reasonably effective. I still get occasional unsolicited faxes from various scam artists, but on the order of one per month rather than hundreds per day. And the fax spammers' effectiveness is limited by the complex arrangements they must take to hide their operations (phone redirectors, being unable to accept credit cards in many cases, etc.) When I call these scumbags I literally read them Title 47 section 227 with particular emphasis on the parts about $1500/fax liability. I agree that technical measures should also be taken and that laws
against email spamming won't stop it all. But at least it will drive them even further underground and erode any legitimacy they currently claim. It also allows for
punishment to be meted out to the most outrageous spammers who are
caught. As it is, we've seen recent articles in the New York Times
and Wall Street Journal profiling well-known spammers and detailing
their allegedly lavish lifestyles and new cars and houses. I would
rather pass laws like these and read articles detail the imprisonment
of these spammers and confiscation of the houses, cars, and other
proceeds of their criminal behavior.
Fixing spam with the legal code Posted May 1, 2003 6:20 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Spammers need money, which means they need to operate businesses. If they cannot operate local businesses, they will have no reason to spam.The limit on this process is that a spammer can locate in a spam-friendly country, e.g. Korea, and target only Koreans, but actually spam the whole world hoping to reach those who are physically in Korea. That you are not really a potential customer has never kept spam out of your machine before... (I have no idea how friendly Korea really is toward spammers. It was just an example of a non-US country.)
Fixing spam with the legal code Posted May 1, 2003 6:36 UTC (Thu) by cfischer (subscriber, #3983) [Link] > What reason is there to believe that the legal system will be any> more effective at shutting down spam than it is, say, at stopping > the distribution of DeCSS? Some European countries (such as Austria where I live) have such a Claus Fischer
Fixing spam with the legal code Posted May 1, 2003 10:49 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link] Today, the first company just got convicted in here in Denmark for spamming. They got a fine of DKR15000 ($2000-3000), which is not a lot, but it should be said that the company is small and only earned DKR19000 the last year and the court apparently had that in mind when setting the size of the fine.I don't get any danish spam. All the spam I get is either Asian or from USA. I think it will have an effect that MS, AOL and other big companies have really started fighting spam. They have the money and the legal resources to do that. We'll never get rid if spam entirely, but I believe we will see a decline in spam in a few years. Well, I hope we will :)
Open proxies replacing open relays Posted May 1, 2003 12:29 UTC (Thu) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link] Judging from discussion in news.admin.net-abuse.email, open relay spam is declining these days. Spammers are shifting to using open HTTP proxies because an HTTP proxy doesn't add a 'Received:' header as SMTP relays do. This makes it harder to find the spammer, because the message's headers will only contain the proxy server's IP address; the spammer's IP is in the proxy's logs, but the recipient can't see them.See http://www.dnsbl.sorbs.net/proxy.html for an example of using an HTTP proxy to send e-mail.
Fixing spam with the legal code Posted May 1, 2003 13:59 UTC (Thu) by DaveK (subscriber, #2531) [Link] What reason is there to believe that the legal system will be any more effective at shutting down spam than it is, say, at stopping the distribution of DeCSS? Any legal system, or indeed any law within a legal system is onbly as successful as its enforcement In any situation, there are three types of people/organisation.
In the case of the DeCSS, Those of us who were in need of software to watch DVDs on the OS or our choice that was not supported by the manufacturers were in favour, and were happy to help the code move around and keep it available - thus invoking the 'Cat out for the bag' situation. The MPAA and friends were against (a powerful lobby nonetheless), but most people either had set top box DVD players or use a proprietary system to watch DVDs, and were either oblivious or unconcerned. Corporations who were not directly linked to the DVD industry - which is most of them - were largely unconcerned too Thus, although cases were brought, ultimate enforcement failed as it was sensed that DeCSS might be in the public interest. In the case of spam, the spammers are in favour, but most people with a computer agree that spam is a 'Bad ThingTM', and most corporations expend a lot of time, effort and money filtering spam, and you'd do well to find anyone who was indifferent on the subject. IMHO if there is a legal statute against spam, and a clear and simple way of reporting it to the enforcing authority, which could be seen to be taking action, then many more people will contribute to the effort of rooting out the spammers, and make it a much less attractive option.
Fixing spam with the legal code Posted May 2, 2003 16:49 UTC (Fri) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] There is an important difference between DeCSS and an anti-spam law. The difference is that people actually *want* spam to stop, atleast 99% of the people who have an opinion at all want it to stop.People also like money. Make a law saying that spam is unlawful, and that any and all who receive unlawful spam are entitled to $50 or actual damages, whichever is greater, pr. unlawful spam received. You won't *need* the FCC to police it. You will have millions and millions of angry nerds taking care of that. I know it works. comercial email to recipients who have not before given informed, active, consent is illegal in Norway (and in the rest of Scandinavia as far as I know.) and it does infact work: there is no spam-problem here. On the other hand I get tons and tons and TONS of spam advertising for American companies, and a crapload of asian-origin various spams.
Fixing spam with the legal code Posted May 3, 2003 2:46 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] That would be totally unfair. $50 is way more than the cost of deleting a spam. I don't like people filling my mailbox with junk, but I don't deserve to make a profit off of it.Make the amount something commensurate with the actual damage. $1 or less. Believe me, that would still make spam unprofitable for the spammer if it could be enforced. Or if you think everyone wouldn't claim his $1 or it would too inefficient, then make it $50 per complaint, but the money goes to someone other than the complainer. Maybe subsidizing everyone's ISP charges or something. The most important thing about financial approaches to eliminating spam is that you don't actually have to make value judgements over what is and is not evil spam. You don't have to punish people for being so evil as to send a spam. People sending solicitations that will be of interest to only 1 in a million people won't find it profitable, but people sending email that the recipients actually want will find it economically viable one way or another.
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