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Spam Government The Courts Your Rights Online News

UK Spam Law Goes Live 215

Posted by michael from the good-luck dept.
loonix_gangsta writes "So, the UK has taken matters into its own hands and, as of today, is making it a criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them. The law comes into force today. Unfortunately much spam originates from the US so the UK had previously asked the US to co-operate."
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UK Spam Law Goes Live More

UK Spam Law Goes Live

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  • This could help spammers.. ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by junkymailbox ( 731309 ) * on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:10AM (#7689733)
    in true slashdot style, NOT RTFA

    The laws make it a criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them.

    IANAL the article is not clear on whether they're going to prosecute the companies or the spammers working for a company?
    If they are going to prosecute the companies then i would imagine someone's going to do a fake spam to frame their competitor.
    with the current way of distributing spam via viruses and zombies this seems like a great law to use to annoy your competitor.

    • Re:This could help spammers.. ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:03PM (#7690221) Journal
      My concern is the same as with the proposed California spam law -- what constitutes "agreed to accept" and at what level do I get arrested?

      I've been job hunting recently and have sent several resumes to people with whom I've had no previous contact, generally having gotten their addresses from their friends who suggested I contact them. Including in the UK. Would I be eligible for prosecution under this law? Would they actually arrest me?

      • Re:This could help spammers.. ? (Score:5, Informative)

        by IIH ( 33751 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:43PM (#7691833)
        I've been job hunting recently and have sent several resumes to people with whom I've had no previous contact, generally having gotten their addresses from their friends who suggested I contact them. Including in the UK. Would I be eligible for prosecution under this law?

        The law is for "unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing", so the point you raise is moot.

  • And yet... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:11AM (#7689741) Homepage
    BOSS: "I'm going to call you about the meeting to accept messages about the meeting. Is that okay with you?"

    EMPLOYEE: "I didn't agree to receive this e-mail!"

    • Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 )
      Talk about the law of unintended consequences....

      So I guess the idea is that people within the same country should have a major hassle in sending messages, but that if you have an out of country mail server available you can spam all you want?

      What we need here is a larger clue-stick, perhaps in the shape of a cricket bat?

    • Re:And yet... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JawFunk ( 722169 )
      Haha. THis was exactly my thought. How is this law going to be interpreted by lawyers, espeially in America. I work at a firm (law firm, coincidentally) and a third of our clients originate in London and Bermuda (UK law). It would be hilarious if they sued us for sending them updates on cases without notifying them or getting written agreement first, via mail! This is worse than the DMCA, I wonder how the UK courts will use or abuse this legislation.

      • Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by samhalliday ( 653858 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:50AM (#7690106) Homepage Journal
        in the UK the courts are a way to settle injustice; unlike in the US where courtcases are seen as a second income.

        the courtroom will not have its time wasted on stupid bickering like you suggest. and besides, i'm sure they will include some kind of description of email/txt which falls under this law... otherwise ANY txt and email from a company at the moment is illegal.

      • Re:And yet... (Score:3, Informative)

        by radish ( 98371 )
        It only replies to marketing mail sent from a company to an individual, without his/her prior consent or a prior business relationship existing. Seems pretty clear to me.
    • Well, if you don't like the new law, send an e-mail to every member of parliament and tell them what you think!

      Oh wait ...

  • Unfortunately much spam originates from the US... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Andypoo ( 619268 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:11AM (#7689746) Journal
    Personally, I see a lot more spam from China or Korea than the US. Sure, we get a fair bit from worm infected machines these days, but China and Korea are still the heavy hitters. Perhaps it would be more positive to amend the article, "Unfortunately, the UK is responsible for a very small segment of spam in the wild, so this is law is not likely to make a major difference to Internet users." Having said that, there are lots of people *responsible* for spam in the US, but it's next to impossible to tie most common spam to these respective (can I even use that word in this context?) people. Andypoo.

    • Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WildBeast ( 189336 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:13AM (#7689759) Journal
      What worries me is that people who's machines get worm infected might be the ones getting sued.

      • Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Andypoo ( 619268 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:15AM (#7689784) Journal
        This both worries me and pleases me at the same time.

        Whilst innocent users could get caught up in horrendous legal battles, it also means that class actions against certain companies making horribly bug-riddled mail clients may also be forced to take place.

        Of course, I shouldn't really wish legal battles on anybody, but in the view of means to an end..

        Andypoo.
        (Yes, this time I will use Plain Old Text)

      • Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:29AM (#7689921) Homepage
        While on the one hand this is bad since an "innocent" gets taken to court, but since the "a trojan did it your honour!" plea seems to be the in thing in the UK at the moment that's not too much of a problem. However, raising public awareness of the issue of not patching your system may lead to you been held liable for spam or worse is a good thing.

        I'd actually like to see a few people found guilty of this and fined a negligable amount on the grounds they were "less than technically competent" or whatever legal euphemism for "dumb" the court comes up with. Making companies, and even end users, liable for not patching their system could be a good thing all round. The big problem with this though is patch availability; if the patch has been out for months, as in the case of Nimda IIRC, then fair enough. But what happens if the first thing the world knows about a problem is when the worm hits the Internet? Can you guarantee that your judge and jury can tell the difference and pass an appropriate sentence? I suspect the answer is, and will remain for some time, "no".

      • That's not a problem. "Excuse me sir, your car was used in a bank robbery yesterday. We'd like you to answer some questions." One alibi later - that person is not guilty of a crime.

        Similarly "Excuse me sir, your computer was used to deliver illegal spam yesterday. We'd like you to answer some questions." One locked down computer later - that person is not guilty of a crime.

        The requirement for you to defend yourself when something of yours was used in a crime is not a new problem. The only problem is

    • Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US. (Score:5, Informative)

      by gorbachev ( 512743 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:20AM (#7689822) Homepage
      The spam sent from China and Korea is overwhelmingly sent by US based spammers exploiting the widespread open proxy problem in the Far East.

      The other major source of spam from the Far East are the "bulletproof" spamming facilities provided to US based career spammers by greedy Chinese administrators.

      It is not that difficult at all to track who is responsible for the spam, just see who's being advertised.

      In addition, most of these types of spam has a "fingerprint" that pinpoints the spam to some career spammer. The fingerprint can be a domain name, method of operandi, language in the spam, anything really. Resources like ROKSO at spamhaus.org are very good at identifying the real source of the spam.

      Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers. The more painful and slower, the better.
      • I deal a fair bit with tracking of spam (I wouldn't say I'm an expert or trained in any regard), but a lot of the spam (mostly pharmaceutical, penis enlargements, etc) seem to point back to sites hosted in China. I'd say the vast majority of these.

        Whilst you can use a bit of 'guesswork' to determine that they may be from the US due to certain use of grammar, linked images, etc, the *majority* is just pointing to China and sometimes Korea (although this is more just delivery).

        I don't know, maybe we're jus

        • Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by leerpm ( 570963 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:49AM (#7690095)
          Again, you missed his point. These people are operating completely via proxies. The websites, the trojaned open-relays, the dns hosting, are based in Asia and operated discretly by career spammers in the US. The only way you can trace it, is either the fingerprint in the spam or by "reverse-hacking" those already trojaned machines to find the path back to the original spammer's location.
      • I get tons of spam that is written in Chinese, Korean and Russian. From looking at the phone numbers and Internet addresses listed in the ads, these are not from American companies. Much of it is relayed through computers on American broadband ISPs. I'm guessing that there are a lot of virus/worm infected PCs on these networks with backdoors for spammers. Why so many companies in Moscow want to spam me with their ads is a mystery to me.
    • A lot of spam does indeed 'come from' Korea, China, Brazil etc, but a vast majority of it is still being sent by US spammers, using open relays and proxies in the aforementioned locations. Same with bullet-proof hosting of spamvertized webpages.

  • Problems already (Score:5, Informative)

    by JamesD_UK ( 721413 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:11AM (#7689747) Homepage
    The register is running an interesting article on the difficulty [theregister.co.uk] people have had so far reporting their spam. It appears that the paperwork and procedures for complaints are not yet available. How useful.

  • Wont make a blind bit of difference (Score:5, Insightful)

    by L-s-L69 ( 700599 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:13AM (#7689757)
    1. 90+% of spam is illegal anyway (dodgy companies)
    2. Most spam is from US/Far east
    3. Spam gets sent because really stupid ppl respond to it
    The impact of spam will only be lessoned when people are educated to take care of the problem. I.e Not responding to spam and taking responsibilty for their internet connection rather than just calling for legislation.

    The UK always has this "Something must be done" mentality without people ever thinking perhaps *they* could do something.

    • Re:Wont make a blind bit of difference (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rbeltene ( 731812 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:20AM (#7689827)
      Exactly. As a Sys Admin - I constantly told people that I didn't care what kind of spam hit their email (and it is amazing what gets through filters) NOT to reply to it because it just perpetuated it and definately increased the amount of spam they were going to get. I also recently cleaned a client's system (cable modem - no firewall) - they had so much spyware and adware on it that it took 20 minutes after the OS started before you could get the system to repsond - among it were three redirected hosts - guess what they were doing, all unaware.

    • Re:Wont make a blind bit of difference (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I agree with you wholeheartedly, except #2:

      ALL the spam I get is from US-based companies, but most of their spam are sent via poorly configured servers in the far east... which leads me to something else:

      (I am posting this as AC because I love my karma, and I could get in trouble if I post this with my real nick.)

      When I receive spam, I often try to compromise the servers related. If I receive a spam containing an hreffed image, I compromise the server, and replace the image with my own saying "If you c

    • Re:Wont make a blind bit of difference (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tom ( 822 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:11PM (#7690311) Homepage Journal
      Well, brainiard, why don't you go out and get several hundred million Internet users the required level of education?

      See, the problem is that stupid idiots do and always will exist. In most of society, that isn't much of a problem because they are a minority and their impact is minimal.

      In spam, their existence threatens the communication medium for all of us. Due to the various factors of economy valid for e-mail that the anti-spam community has been pointing out for ages, this minority has a huge impact. Educating them won't work, because by definition, this bottom part on the intelligence scale can not be educated.

      Laws are the correct approach, but only if they are executed properly. When the government starts having an active interest, then spammers will go away.
      Don't believe me? The gov blows insane amounts of money on bringing individuals to justice already, if they are considered evil enough to warrant that (i.e. murderers, child molesters, etc.)
      Once spammers enter that category, they will fade into a background noise, just like crime. Sure, there will always be child molesters/spammers, but they will be so few that you can use e-mail and your child can use the playground without having them all over you/her.

      Maybe the gov should start by demonstrating how serious they are. Just grab a random 5-10 spammers and prosecute them to hell and back. It won't make spam magically disappear, but it just might reduce the level as people get out of a game that's becoming too hot for them

  • Appplies to the whole EU (Score:5, Informative)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:14AM (#7689770) Journal
    This law is an EU wide law and therefore applies to all member countries, including from next year (2004) at least some of the Spammers favourite countries such as Poland, Estonia etc.

    • Applies, but has not taken effect (Score:5, Informative)

      by kaan ( 88626 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:34AM (#7689971)
      The law does apply to the entire EU, but it has not taken effect EU-wide, as it is up to each member of the EU to follow through. The UK has moved forward, but most of the other members (list below) have not. It's also not clear that they ever will.

      From The Register [theregister.co.uk]:

      The directive obliged individual EC member states to introduce anti-spam laws by October 31. However nine member nations of the 15 country European Union have so far failed to adopt anti-spam legislation. France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden all face possible court action unless they provide an explanation on their lack of progress within the next two months. Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK have already taken steps to adopt the EU law.
      • TheRegister:
        France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden all face possible court action unless they provide an explanation on their lack of progress within the next two months.
        Interesting. Finland has had anti-spam legislation since 1999, opt-in for individuals and opt-out for companies. Its enforcement and interpretation has been a problem, though. I believe a new law is being drafted (or is it already proposed?).

        • Interesting. Finland has had anti-spam legislation since 1999, opt-in for individuals and opt-out for companies. Its enforcement and interpretation has been a problem, though. I believe a new law is being drafted (or is it already proposed?).

          At the moment the law is being processed in the parliamentary committees. As far as I understand, the law will probably bring no signigicant changes to spam legislation (although the law itself covers many areas other than spam). EFFI has been heard in the process

      • The UK has moved forward, but most of the other members (list below) have not. It's also not clear that they ever will.

        Like the EUCD (aka the Euro-DMCA), they rarely adopt within the limits given. But, they usually fall in line within a year or three. I know my country is likely to pass the EUCD-implementation sometime next year. That they haven't done so within the first limit is business as usual. No reason to believe they won't adopt it all.

        Kjella
    • EU wide-law. US/UK cooperation in Iraq. Isn't it great to see Oceana and Eastasia forming right before your very eyes?

  • maximum what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LuxFX ( 220822 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:18AM (#7689805) Homepage Journal
    Critics of the UK approach say the laws do not go far enough and that the maximum 5,000 fine is not high enough.

    5,000 fine for what? Laws like the California anti-spam bill (which unfortunately will be nixed by the new federal bill before it even becomes law) allow for fines on a per-email basis. If this is the same, then I see no problem with 5,000 per email. It will add up in the end. But if it is 5,000 per campaign!? Much to little.

    This law does allow for individuals to sue for themselves, but I didn't see anything mentioning if the marketers could be sued as well as the spammers. So it's got a leg up on the US law, although it could be better.

    • Re:maximum what? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      The "UKP 5000" quote is a bit misleading since there are basically two types of prosecution under the law; before a magistrate and no jury (I'm not sure what the US equivalent is called, but I know there is one) then the maximum fine is indeed UKP 5000 *per prosecution*. If you go to court proper with a judge and jury then there is no limit on the potential fine. There is also the issue of court costs, but I would expect that if found guilty the spammer would be required to pay in both cases.

  • This bothers me a bit. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:19AM (#7689812) Homepage Journal
    On the one hand, obviously spam is a problem to some people and the effort to reduce or eliminate many kinds of it should be applauded.

    However, this provides more interference with the operation of the Internet while offering very little in the way of actual benefit. Already some people [somethingawful.com] have experienced problems with overzealous realtime blackhole lists, others (me) have problems with ISPs implementing incoming filters without letting anybody know, silently dropping legitimate mail along with the illegitimate. And legal solutions rarely are -- it's just a matter of time before a loophole is found in this one (besides the obvious: since the empire has waned in recent years only the U.K. really trembles at U.K. law). Additionally, this may impede legitimate unsolicited commercial e-mail as well as that of the "Free Vitamins 7538" variety.

    At the end of the day, we've really yet to mount a good defense to spam. And I still don't think laws are the way to do it.

    • Geez, just leave that somethingawful.com non-event out of this.

      The script kiddies at SA just went on a hissy fit due to being hosted by a blatant spam supporter. There was no overzealous blocklisting.

    • Additionally, this may impede legitimate unsolicited commercial e-mail as well as that of the "Free Vitamins 7538" variety."

      But what kinds of "legitimate" unsolicited commercial email are you thinking of? I for one would consider any unsolicited advertisements in my inbox are spam, whether they're from Viagra Spammer #89723490, or whether they're from Sierra Entertainment, AOL or Microsoft or...
      If I had actually wanted the email, I would have asked for it, and then it's not unsolicited, is it?

      • But what kinds of "legitimate" unsolicited commercial email are you thinking of? I for one would consider any unsolicited advertisements in my inbox are spam, whether they're from Viagra Spammer #89723490, or whether they're from Sierra Entertainment, AOL or Microsoft or... If I had actually wanted the email, I would have asked for it, and then it's not unsolicited, is it?

        That's what people who are afraid of a total SPAM ban don't really understand. The junk mail you get in your postal mailbox doesn't co

    • Additionally, this may impede legitimate unsolicited commercial e-mail

      I think if you gave most Net users the choice, they'd like the senders of "legitimate" spam to FOAD with the rest of them.

  • Goodbye Social networking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:24AM (#7689868)
    "criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them"

    Examples of spam?

    "I found your article at example.com very interesting, but I have some additional information you might be interested in..."

    "Regarding the job posting in this Sunday's paper..."

    "Excellent blog for today, I laughed my ass off"
    • I suspect the actual act is probably a little more specific, saying something like "unsolicited commercial emails or text messages" rather than just "emails or text messages". But that's journalists for you, they rarely give a fig about accuracy.

    • Commercial only? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 )
      I wouldn't be surprised if the article left out that this only applies to commercial emails. If it doesn't then it should.

  • Law excludes businesses (Score:4, Informative)

    by JawFunk ( 722169 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:24AM (#7689871)
    According to this link [bbc.co.uk] "But the regulations do not cover business e-mail addresses, despite some calls for a blanket ban on spam."

    Interestingly enough, businesses suffer most from spam, not only in jamming traffic and exhausting space on mail servers, but also losing money on employees sorting through or reading spam mail.

    • I don't know how you'd craft such a law to apply to businesses. If I send an unsolicited resume to their HR department, a complaint to their CEO, or a problem report to a tech in IT, would that fall afoul of the spam laws?

  • Shutting out the worst offenders (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Macka ( 9388 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:24AM (#7689874)

    There seems to have been quite an escalation of spam over the last couple of months, with my mailbox receiving double the amount it used to. I've managed to cut that down to just a handful a day by adding a blanket delete rule on all mails coming from earthlink.com, juno.com, verizon.net, sprint.com, concentric.com, att.net, rr.com, ukscby.com, ukscby.net and any address ending in .ar.

    It's a shame that all users of those domains/services are now blocked from sending me legitimate email, but until they get their act together and clamp down on spammers, that's the way it's going to stay.

    My junk filter catches 99% of the rest, but at 1/2 a dozen a day, that's easily manageable.

    Hopefully the impending US Law will make life harder for them. Ok, it's not the best solution, but it's a step in the right direction, and will make it easier to take similar small steps in the future so that we end up get legislation that really does the business.

    And before anyone pipes up stating that you can get rid of spam by legislation alone, sure I acknowledge that. But there is no "one size fits all" solution to this problem, it has to be tackled on many fronts. Both legally and technically! So this is an important arrow to have in the quiver.

    Macka
    • ... can get rid of spam ...

      whoops, that should have read "can't ..."

    • Have you ever considered that "real" people actually use local sendmail to send their email because they find it more reliable than their ISP's SMTP?

      Don't delete. Bounce the email with some kind of message.

      -Erwos

      • Well he's not doing blanket deletes of all local mail origins--just providers which make it easy for users to spam, from the looks of it.

        I agree wholeheartedly with you that the school of thought saying "use your provider's mail server" is misguided--which is why I'm pretty happy that the easynet blacklist (easynet.nl) is going down the tubes.

        We use a Debian box with a single static IP inbound and twin DHCP (which for all intents and purposes never change) outbound for network load splitting. I tell all
      • Please don't "bounce the e-mail with some kind of message". My yahoo email address is currently being "borrowed" by some spammer as their from-address, resulting in such bounce messages coming to me. It's very tedious.

  • Laws (Score:3)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:26AM (#7689890) Homepage Journal
    Here is some laws I would suggest:
    A) Whoever has an open server can get fined/sued/whatever for at least a small amount if it sends spam.
    B) Fine people who reply to spam.
    C) Anyone who sells an email service or product should point to some good anti-spam software (the user can choose to use it or not).
    D) Just make Murphy's Laws official for once and for all, dammit!

  • Link to the actual Law (Score:5, Informative)

    by twoshortplanks ( 124523 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:28AM (#7689902) Homepage
    Rather than listening people spouting off all over the place, and getting my infomation second hand, I like to actually read::

    The Law [hmso.gov.uk]

    as published by the government itself.

    • And here's the section which applies to electronic mail:

      Use of electronic mail for direct marketing purposes

      22. - (1) This regulation applies to the transmission of unsolicited communications by means of electronic mail to individual subscribers.

      (2) Except in the circumstances referred to in paragraph (3), a person shall neither transmit, nor instigate the transmission of, unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing by means of electronic mail unless the recipient of the electron

  • I've felt the effects of this! (Score:4, Funny)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:29AM (#7689915) Homepage
    I've gotten several emails today from companies asking me to give permission to send me emails in the future.

    But these emails that ask for permission -- I didn't ask for them! Those companies are _breaking the law_!

    Meanwhile, today's spam count from Africa, the USA, etc: 40.

  • Just in denial! (Score:5, Informative)

    by LuxFX ( 220822 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:32AM (#7689954) Homepage Journal
    But new research suggests most top UK websites are already breaking the new rules.
    "Companies are either not aware of the legislation, or are ignoring it," said Ian Thomas from WebAbacus.

    Perhaps in some cases, but it others I'm not so sure it's either. I think some companies are just in denial about sending spam. Sounds hard to believe, right? Well, I run a small web design company, and I specifically put a No Spam clause in my contracts. When I talk about this with clients, I get some pretty sad responses.

    They are all shocked that I would suggest that they would spam -- because most of them think that 'spam' only refers to the pornography, penis/breast enlargement, Nigerian scam, fraudulent products, etc. emails. In their eyes, "we're just sending out a promotional email, it isn't spam!" When I ask them if they will only send emails to people who have requested it, the response is typically, "We have to send out to more people than that! We are planning on buying a list of email addresses from (fill-in-the-blank-"marketing"-operation) and using that. That's ok, right?"

    Now I'm not talking about companies that knowingly hire spammers to do their marketing, I'm talking about the smaller companies that try to do it themselves, or maybe are convinced of the legality from a spammer wanting some more business, and end up becoming part of the spam problem with their purchased lists and "but we offer a legitimate service!" attitudes.

    These people are just in denial.

    • Re:Just in denial! (Score:3, Informative)

      by alanxyzzy ( 666696 )

      But new research suggests most top UK websites are already breaking the new rules. "Companies are either not aware of the legislation, or are ignoring it," said Ian Thomas from WebAbacus.

      This refers to another part of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which deals with cookies.
      More in this BBC report [bbc.co.uk]
      There is more detail in the PDF files at the Office of the Information Commissioner [informatio...ner.gov.uk]

  • I guess windows will become a very unpopular OS since FBI will be kicking in doors to arrest people who's computers were comondeared for spam so they can be extradignted to england
  • I wonder how many domains will move their registration/hosting to the UK (or some similar spam-regulated region). If I were a spammer, I would avoid sending stuff to countries that might create legal entanglements. If a quick whois reveals that the domain is in the UK (for example), then I might as well take that domain off my address lists (since the spammer's revenue per spam is low, they should be risk averse). Of course international spammers may think they are above the law.
    • oh, that would assume that you actually kept the lists yourself.

      and not just didn't buy the list off from shady dealer.

      .
      • oh, that would assume that you actually kept the lists yourself and not just didn't buy the list off from shady dealer.

        Good point, but harsher penalties for spam will change the behavior of list makers and list buyers. Were I a list buyer, I would want the list provider to gaurantee that I would not face legal headaches for using the names of that list. Thus, I wonder how long it will take list buyers to put spam indemnity clauses in list purchase contracts? Or, I might ask for list that has no UK n
  • Well, it would be as effective as any of the laws being passed right now ;-)

  • Attack the link destinations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:43AM (#7690043)
    Most spam is intended to make the recipient visit some destination and do business of some kind. Perhaps anti-spam laws needs to target the businesses that use spam to create business - the destinations of all those links in all those spams. Any company that sells viagra, ink jet cartridges, cell phone plans, or mortgages will have a more vulnerable point of presense than a spammer does. Even porn and gambling sites could be vulnerable because they require more permaneance than does a spam operation. If those companies where held accountable for their marketing affiliate's spams, then they might not engage the services of spammers.
    • I agree.

      If you want to fight spam, screw all this technology and all this FUD about super-genius unstoppable mafia crimelord spammers. FOLLOW THE MONEY. STOP THE MONEY. Then you will stop the spam. The end.

  • Maybe this is a gross oversimplification (Score:3, Interesting)

    by subjectstorm ( 708637 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:49AM (#7690093) Journal
    But why not simply form a "National Do Not Spam List"?

    This sort of thing allows for blanket rejection of the bulk of spam. Legit companies could of course be made exempt, as with the DNC List (debatable).

    We could then levy fines on a per-incident basis.

    I'll admit that FINDING the spammers might be more difficult than tracking a telemarketer - but not a hell of a lot more difficult.

    You also have to consider that, unless it's an outright scam like #419, somebody is paying the spammer. Making it illegal to purchase "leads" from spammers would also be a REALLY SWELL THING TO TRY. After all, buying stolen property (even if you didn't KNOW for sure that it was stolen) is still illegal. It's not really that hard for these mortgage brokers and discount drug companies to know if they're dealing with a legitimate source or not.

    Just a few thoughts. Comments are encouraged :)
    • I would like to see some Attorney General demand proof that people opted-in for the spam in question and if they don't check out with the people on the list they should be held criminally liable. I constantly get spams saying "You are receiving this because you chose to receive offers from blah blah blah..." Really? I did? Must have been one of those wild, drunken email nights I keep having.
  • All they have to do now is to use an opt-in with vague wording, like "check here if you Don't want offers", and then later "check here if you do want offers"... after a few of those, many people would accidentally check the wrong one, and be spammed into oblivion -- legally no less!
    • That's a very cute trick.

      In fact one site I went to had two questions...
      a)Tick here if you want us to send marketing info.
      b) Tick here if you don't want to receive marketing info from our competititors.

      Note...one question has to be answered with a negative and one with a positive.

      You could say something like "Don't tick here if you don't want offers". Which would mean "tick here if you want offers. Would confuse most people.

  • US cooperation? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gradji ( 188612 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:05PM (#7690255)
    Given the difficulty the US is having of not only enforcing but also legally maintaining the "Do-Not-Call" Phone Registry federal initiative, I have doubts that the US would ever be able to implement an effective anti-spam law

    While spammers don't have the political clout of telemarketers, it is easier to enforce laws aimed at telemarketing than spam as the major customers of telemarketers tend to be large corporations (long distance phone companies) and phone calls are easier to trace back to source than e-mail.

  • Matters into our own hands (Score:3, Funny)

    by Burb ( 620144 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:22PM (#7690441)
    Yes, interesting factoid for the day! The UK is actually an independent nation that actually has its own laws! Gosh!
  • I imagine that whoever polices this will have as much teeth as the data protection registrar.

    It will probably end up with a staff of 3, and the most they'll do is send warning letters to people.

    This government will only put an effort in to prosecute people when they can make some money or spoil people's fun.

  • IMHO the law should not apply to emails which are written and sent to a single recipient. For example, I think it should be legal for me to send my CV to a company, attached to a personalised email. The thing to outlaw is "bulk" spamming, whereby multiple emails are generated by a process which is primarily automatic.

    Unfortunately, the law (see Google's cached version [216.239.59.104], section 22 - HMSO seems to have been down for days)
    appears to make no such distinction: sending a single email without prior permissi

  • BocaRaton is where spam comes from? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by emptybody ( 12341 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:44PM (#7690654) Homepage Journal
    From the UK article link -
    It is of course understood that the majority of spammers are based outside Europe. In fact, it is thought that the
    majority of serious commercial spammers are based in an area of the US called Boca Raton, in a few square miles and it is not common for UK business to contravene the expectations of common practice.

    Who would have thought we could just block BocaRaton. Also, looks like if I have a contest and tell people that register that they get additional entries for people that they refer - they are now breaking the law by spamming their friends.

    • As a former Verio employee they have a large managed and dedicated hosting facility in Boca. They bought the old IBM building there in around 96-7. A company called Hiway. They also moved a huge load of servers from Orem Utah(porn I would imagine)

      So this would make sense the shitload of spam coming from Boca.

      Puto

  • Notification (Score:2, Funny)

    by klokwise ( 610755 )

    as ignorance of the law is no defence, i am going to e-mail all my contacts at once and tell them about this. i also encourage all of you to mail everyone in your address book and tell them. maybe, even do a good deed and e-mail some people you never have before to spread this excellent news.

    the more the merrier!

    • If they don't forward your message on to all of their friends they will suffer terrible bad luck, never win the lottery, and never get a great rate on a refinanced mortgage.
  • What about the companies that pay for spamming services? Are they just as liable as the people who are sending the Spam? I mean, there wouldn't be (as much) Spam if companies wouldn't be paying for it. And there would be even less if they were fined for using these services.
  • This is not going to cure all spam overnight all by itself, ergo it's pointless.
  • I hope they sent out an email to all UK citizens informing them of this.
  • There's no reason your mailbox can't be in another country, after all. Maintaining a mailbox in the EU may have some value, if the EU goes in for aggressive spam prosecutions.

    This may provide the political leverage to toughen up US spam laws. If EU ISPs (like Virgin.net" [virgin.net]) start advertising in the US, that would put pressure on Congress.

  • The implenetation is laughable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:32PM (#7691721) Homepage Journal
    Being a British citizen recieving spam to a personal mailbox, I phoned the "Information Commission" to get them to so something about the 50 or so spams I have had since midnight when the act came into force.

    Their procedure is for me to print out a 4 page Word document (no rtf, html or any other version!), manually fill in dozens of mostly irrelevant questions, and then snail-mail(!) the form to them.

    I pointed out that mailing them 200 pages of handwritten notes every 6 hours was a bit impractical, and they told me they would ONLY investigate cases where I had CONTACTED THE SPAMMER AND ASKED TO UNSUBSCRIBE!

    I told the person on the other end that replying to Spam is the best way to get deluged with more, and they agreed with me.

    The only bright side is that they will soon put up details of how to bypass the Information Commission and take action on your own.

  • I'm going after Yahoo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @02:56PM (#7691948) Homepage Journal
    This law is only really enforceable against reasonably legitimate companies with UK addresses. It needs a test case, and I've found a real doozy of a target!

    For years now, Yahoo have been sticking html and text adverts on the end of messages on YahooGroups mailing lists, which bugs the hell out of me. So I just mailed Yahoo UK to tell them I'm not consenting to recieving adverts from them.

    Technically, I can claim 5,000 for each one I get from now on. It will be interesting to see how this works out - maybe they will unsubscribe me from everything?

  • Is targeted researched email SPAM? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by emptybody ( 12341 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @03:48PM (#7692502) Homepage Journal
    If I research potential customers and send them an email to sell my services, am I a spammer?

    I claim that mass mailings would be spam however if I have taken the time to hunt down contact information for potential customers sending them my marketing information via published contact addresses (Phone, Post or Email) should all be viable methods.

    What do slashdot readers think?

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