Two New Spam Laws in Japan 23
An anonymous reader submits: "The Daily Yomiuri, one of the major newpapers in Japan, reports
(in English) that two new laws aimed at spam have just come into effect.
In short, the laws require that spammers honor 'opt-out,' provide a valid return address, indicate
the commercial nature of the message in the title,
and never use randomly generated email addresses.
The laws were pressured into effect by NTT DoCoMo,
who complained that as much as 84% of all email
circulating on its system (i.e., cell phones) is
sent at random."
Concerning (Score:3, Insightful)
So my question is, are these moderate anti-spam laws really helping or hurting? I see them, in the long run, offering some legitimacy to spam. In that these laws are so weak, that they don't really curb spam, but because they are the only regulation on the topic, spammers will point their ISPs to these laws and demand service.
I'd say maybe the community should fight all laws but out-right bans on spam.
Re:Concerning (Score:3, Insightful)
Incidentally, setting your mail filters to delete all mail with "S.1618" in the body is a terrific spam filter, since no legitimate mail ever refers to it, and nearly all spam does.
Don't get so excited yet (Score:4, Interesting)
As the article points out the government is setting up consultation centres to handle complaints. Redress from the courts, however, is nothing like what we see in Western cultures, let alone British, Australian, New Zealand, American or Canadian courts. In Japan, court cases are long, excessively-drawn-out affairs that do not generally reduce to simple answers. In fact, I'd hypothesise that many outside legal advisers would view the Japanese system as hopelessly hidebound.
I think that the social pressures extant in Japanese society probably could develop into more effective constraints -- about the only aspects of the law that I think would be useful are the 'naming-and-shaming' ones, as bad publicity will lead to a direct and measurable loss of business.
The thing is, DoCoMo might have had better luck in controlling this earlier by :
If the phone companies are resorting to calling for help, they must have really lost control of the situation, as they generally don't like to take this route.
Removal (Score:1)
Spam (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Spam (Score:1)
Spam victims demand satisfaction!
Re:Spam (Score:1)
Well, both are evil, and perpitrators of both go to the same circle of hell. But they get different infernal ZIP codes, because spam usually involves fraud (faked headers); and the costs of spam fall more on the recipient than the sender.
There is regulation (at least in the U.S.) of telephone harassment^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsales calls; they can only be made during certain hours, and the callers have to put you on their "do not call" list upon your request.
There are also legitimate anti-door-to-door soliciting laws - if you put up a "no soliciting" sign, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Fuller Brush man, and people doing door-to-door political campaining have to stay away. (Hmm, I ought to put one up.) So there is precedent for anti-spam regulation.
Re:Spam (Score:2)
If a salesman calls you on the phone, he or his company is paying for the call. Likewise, it doesn't cost you anything to open your door if someone knocks on it.
What about cell phones where the call recipent is paying for the call, you ask? Well, there is an FCC prohibition of phone solicitation using auto-dialers or prerecorded messages to be sent to mobile phone users.
When someone sends you spam, you're paying for the bandwidth used to receive it, period. Considering HTML-formatted spam often has a lot of image files that must be pulled down from a remote server, this can add up quickly-- my Hotmail account (which I do not use and have NEVER given the address of to ANYONE, though I do peek in it occasionally to see how much crap collects in it) gets buried in spam.
The recipient-pays-for-the-bandwidth issue will be a bigger deal in the future as more people move to broadband. The way things are going, the greedy cable companies and phone companies will eventually meter their broadband offerings, to squeeze more money out of their customers while at the same time encouraging them to use the service less. Then they can keep overselling their existing network capacity like they've been doing, without having to do much to increase it.
~Philly
Free speech vs. Commercial speech (Score:1)
Free speech does not allow you to yell "Fire" in a crowded place. If you try it, and you are prosecuted, you are going to loose if you attempt to claim that your actions were legal speech.
Generally, telemarketers, door to door solicitors, and spam are trying to sell you something - this is known as "commercial" speech, and is much more regulated than other sorts of speech on topics like religion or politics. This is why, ultimately, religious and political groups, appeal and usually win, restrictions on non-commercial speech - telemarketers don't. In Colorado, they just started a statewide no-call list. All telephone solicitors are required to purchase the list and NOT call the numbers on the list, fines of up to $10,000 per offense are possible. The big loophole however, is that charitable, political, and established business relationships are excluded. The limits on charitable and politcal groups were added, knowing that they would be struck out on appeal if they had been included.
In your door-to-door example, I believe that you have it backwards - the law was struck down because the religious group had a right to express their beliefs. If the law had been challenged by a salesman, it might/probably would have been different. Commercial speech is not afforded the same rights as protected forms of speech.
Spam Subject Lines (Score:1)
Valid reply address? (Score:1)
It's the valid address I want (Score:1)
Suppose that your bank's employes all used fictitious names, and the bank had a habit of closing doors and moving, but usually advertised a false address. How long would they get away with that?
That's what bugs me. The part that I can't understand is why does the legislature ignore our cries for relief? There's no money in it for them or the state, and I'm pretty sure they aren't hosting $1,000 a plate dinners for herbal Viagra merchants or the "add 2-4 inches" crowd.
Or is it that the members of the legislature still in the 20th century and don't even know about the problem?