Louisiana Tries Anti-Spam Law

chompyZ writes "The legislative battle against SPAMMING heats-up as a new law became effective yesterday in Louisiana. According to KPLC, the new law requires senders of sexually explicit e-mail to include a note in the subject line, "adv-adult," to let unsuspecting internet users know ahead of time. The Olympian reports that Louisiana officials actually think this will be effective... leaves you wondering if "officials" have any clue how SPAMMERS operate..."

Great

Now subjetcs will be

adv-adult: Enlarge your penis

Way to go, I just don't know if this way leads somewhere:)

Re:Great

I think think this is a *cough* really great idea. And this is *cough* very likely to work.

But if they had expanded it beyond only adv-adult it would have been so much better.
Then I could have deleted my scam-419 mail together with the adv-adult mail.

Re:Great

As much as I hate spam, it really bothers me to see any laws which restrict my behavior online. I consider the Internet to be something futuristic, where individuals are free to choose their own code of ethics, rather than having one dictated to them in a larger society, and individuals are free to interpret others' actions as they want and defend themselves as they want. I know that's not very realistic, but the quasi-anarchy "back in the good old days" before the Internet was Serious Business, before the Web was Important was something amazingly freeing and fulfilling. I do not want other people just discovering the realm of computers and global communication to be shoved into just another restrictive, judgemental society like the one in which we all participate in Real Life.

Spam ruins the online experience in the same way that mass-marketed commercialism does, and I hate to see the Internet become a thing of money and corporate power and not of freedom and individual power, but imposing restrictions doesn't seem to address the issue. However, maybe the problem will always be impossible to solve, because with freedom comes greed, and with freedom comes abuse...

But don't forget to try our new Suction Pump!!! Garanteed results!!! An inch every week!!! Girls will beg for you!!! Order from our website!!!

Re:Great

Extremely unrealistic... The same case could be made for Slashdot itself. In the early days of /. there were no user accounts, there was no karma whoring because there wasn't a need for moderation at all. The "community" was small enough that you knew everyone and people could be trusted not to spoof other people. As /. grew, changes had to be made to the social structure in order to cope with scale.

This is true of any society. This is not anything new, as society changed from small family groups to tribes to cities to city states to nations, more laws and force had to be applied to keep things moving smoothly.

The challenge isn't keeping a state of "quasi-anarchy" at all costs, and whining about your rights. The challenge is taking responsibility and tutoring your elected officials on how law, technology and society intersect. Personally, I think there should be some regulation on unsolicited commercial email. Back in the good ole days I could actually use my email, now I get 20-25 spams a day vs about 1 or 2 actual useful e-mails. Personally, I find that a great restriction on my behavior and a burden to my resources.

Re:Great

As much as I hate spam, it really bothers me to see any laws which restrict my behavior online.

Oh, come on. Does the requirement to honestly label the content of a -commercial- message really affect your freedom that much? Businesses -do not- deserve the same rights that private individuals do. As an individual, I believe I have a right to control what mail arrives in my mailbox. That right trumps your right to send me whatever spam you may wish to.

I think it's high time that more first-ammendment acivists (and I consider myself almost a first-ammendment radical) realize that along with freedom-of-speech comes an equally important right to "freedom not to be forced to listen to someone elses freedom of speech". Historically, there was no need for such a law, since you could always go elsewhere if someone was saying something you didn't chjose to listen to. As media becomes more & more closely intertwined with our lives, however, it's becoming impossible to ignore content that you want to. It's important to remember that the proposed law does not prevent you from sending me as much junk mail as you want, it just allows me to easily filter out any messages that I don't want to recieve before they reach my inbox. Laebling laws such as this one (along with adequately severe penalties to ensure compliance) are the ideal way of deailing with the problem. It allows your freedom-of-speech, and me my freedom-to-ignore.

Re:I AM a LA resident...

Nope, what it would lead to it would be something like that.

Predefined filter in newer mailers:
move all mssages where subjects contain adv-adult
to folder Personal Folders/Scientific matters against world extinction

and next advertising will be something like protect your self against mom raiding your computer. Use .X.X. mailer

At least it is a try...

Though the paragraph is somewhat pessimistic the concept is a good one. Why not try? If it works, great, if not then tweak it till it does. I hope more states try something.

Re:At least it is a try...

It's not a step in the right direction at all. It's a step toward what the spammers want - a legal backdrop to claim that what they're doing is ok. A step in the right direction would be to stop spamming, not to label their spam so they can then claim it's legal for them to steal.

IANA US resident

and so I don't know the law you have there, but won't it just cause spammers to move outside Louisiana?

Then we'd see...

Subject: a<!--xkxiseig-->dv-4d<input type="hidden">ult

Body:
Fr33 g0at pr0n c!ick h3re!

donotspam.gov???

I'm waiting to see how futile an http://donotspam.gov would be.

Re:donotspam.gov???

D'oh! I read that as donutspam.gov, and thought it was a pretty good idea. How disappointing.

What about offshore spammers

Most every porn type email I get can be traced back to servers in China or The Netherlands. I doubt those Cajuns will be going overseas anytime soon to prosecute.

Hmm, just got a new porn email, from Pythonvideo, up in Canada. Hope those guys have a large travel budget.

Of course spammers won't comply....

...but they will be breaking a law in a clear cut manner, and that will be enough to start prosecuting. Jail time is the greatest way to punish someone, you effectively rob them of freedom, which you only have a finite amount of.

Text of bill?

I think this [state.la.us] might be the text of the bill.

yeah

"adv-adult: Fill your prescriptions from Canada, save up to 80% !"

That would be really helpful if I not only didn't have a spam filter, but took the time to read every spam that didn't have a pornographic title.

Of course, this only applies to louisianans who send non-anonymous pornographic spam to other louisianans.

New Laws?

Spammers are already breaking laws; highjacking mail servers, using trojans such as 'jeem' and 'proxy-guzu' to make others send spam, etc. I doubt this law is going to be the one that finally makes them operate ethically.

Perhaps they need to also make it a crime for an individual in the state to purchase a product or service from a spammer...

Just a hook

It may be ineffective in getting spammers to stop their penis and lolita porn spams, but it does give the state a way of prosecuting spammers. Remember, going after a criminal is just a matter of technicality. After all, they got Al Capone for tax evasion of all things.

It might not work...but...

At least spammers operating inside the U.S. will be a little nervous when they get several notifications from lawyers after it was traced back to them. Bouncing emails off of or originating from foreign mail servers may be effective for not being able to do anything at the ISP level but if they are caught in their apartment standing in a room full of penis enlargement pill cases where the law can reach them at a business level..... They'll probably wish they hadn't sold it to all those prisoners who are winking & saying "you're my little puppy now".

How do they plan on enforcing this stupid law(s)?

Most spammers operate out of other countries these days, as do telemarketers. If you ask one the next time one is on the phone, they usually call from another time zone or Canada (if the target is American). Most spammers operate from servers in Canada or small Pacific Rim countries that would prove immune from this law anyway. Note also that most of these sexually explicit e-mails are easily recognized by anyone literate as they tend to accumulate several consonants at the end of the e-mail title that form babble instead of coherent words. I find this an example of people saber-rattling in preparation for re-election campaigns, especially given that several other meaningless "vote-for-me" laws were modified or enacted at the same time. These include:

-no more execution of the mentally retarded (already mandated by the Supreme Court)

-allows telemarketers to call you if you "are referred to them by someone you know"

-increase penalties against drunk drivers who kill or seriously injure people while driving with over a 0.2 blood alcohol level (as if attempted/ murder is not serious enough to get life in prison anyway)

-no credit card company can give out anything of value to students unless they also get a brochure

Some of the new laws make sense, but again there are enough of weird and nonsensical laws that I wonder if such would make it to the legislative table, much less get passed, if not for the election coming up in about a year's time. Until then I await the first case of a spammer getting tried under this law if he/she/it/they are operating from another state or country.

Re:How do they plan on enforcing this stupid law(s

Actually, many spammers operate from INSIDE the United States, they simply hire companies outside the United States to send/route the spam.

Good spam defence... no way to be correct

As each state and locality implement their own variant, some requiring "ADV:" in the subject line, some requiring "ADULT:" and this one requiring "adv-adult", all a spammer will have to do is claim that he can't possibly satisfy all of the constraints. Why can't we have a header which marks spam as spam, such as "Solicited: no"? Or just require that all spam use "Precedence: bulk"?

Not that any of this will be effective... but if they have to legislate something...

adv-adult

Check out my webcam! [goatse.cx]

You can't mod me down! I had adv-adult in the subject line!

The problem

The problem is getting spammers to honor the law. First of all, I assume (the article did not say) that the law can only affect spammers who are based in Louisiana. That will not even chip away at spammers. Even if it were nationwide, it would be very difficult to chase down even those spammers inside our borders, and impossible to affect those outside.

If it did work, it would make filtering "adult" spam very easy. And I would find it gratifying merely to see a few spammers behind bars, or at least fined out of their livelyhood, for inundating us with piles and piles of junk.

Effectiveness...

Actualy, any law that can be used to prosecute spammer is good. It gives a lot more liability for spammers sending sexualy explicit spam.

The more laws a spammer breaks, the more time he will spend in jail... Hopefully, else the spammer will have to pay a bigger sum, which is good too.

This is a "good thing"

because spam tastes horrible in gumbo.

White list

Handy for those with a spam filter, now you can save the only interesting spam from going to dev/null.

I had an idea

Could someone please make an add-on for your email client to open an email 1000 times in the same window in the background? To every single email you select. Not fetch it off the server 1000 times but just keep opening every email in its own window, in the background. "Why" is because I have noticed that most spam that I am receiving is html with lots of images and the images are loading from someone's server every time I look at one. 10 people using such a feature would be 10,000 page views per spam. Obviously if more then 10 people used it we could pretty much count on heavy graphics laden spams to disappear.

This sounds about right

coming from the state that brings you drive-through daquiri huts. There's a law in Louisiana that says you can't have an open container of liquor in your car. Somehow having a styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw is still a closed container. It's things like this that made me move away from that God-forsaken state. :)

how i blocked USA spam

as 99.9% of spam i recieve is usa based and iam not a USA resident or have any buisness there i managed to block it all simply by filtering the $ sign, works great and hasnt created a false positive in 2years of using this method :-)

I AM a Louisiana resident

This law will get precisely zero (0) significant coverage in-state. The legislature probably passed it to see if they could get some easy extra money for the budget. If push came to shove, they'd drop the issue. BTW, if you're 65 or over and are a victim, the offender must pay double. Check the notes on the law, in a link I posted earlier.

What?

So if I send a saucy email to my girlfriend, I need to include "adv-adult" in the subject line?

And in the meantime, non-explicet Spam continues to pile up.

Good job Louisiana.

Qui bono? Find & fine THEM!

Just gather spam and fine the spammer's client.

That'll make the clients go away and kill the spam industry. Let'em use another means of advertising because spamming will cost them tens of tousands of dollars a copy.

cant prosecute if you cant touch em

half the friggin spam i see comes from China and Germany. The rest comes from either stupid spammers, or open relays. This law is going after the "spammers" who are in contracted out by companies. Why the hell doesnt anyone make a law making those companies accessories. Companies will think twice before letting these scum "advertise" their crap. Then both the spammers who spam their own wares, and the companies who contract out would be held accountable for their bandwidth squatting.

and ffs configure mailservers properly!

As a Louisianan...

I am proud of my legislature, and fully expect this to decrease the amount of spam coming into my mailbox.

By "decrease", of course, I mean "exponentially increase unabated just as it has been doing for the last several years".

Why is this different than snail mail?

If I send unsolicited porn through the USPS I can be arrested, why is email any different? You don't hear to many people screaming that not allowing porno junk mail is a violation of freedom of speech.

Why are we shouting? y z chbawqhxebt

I hate spamming as much as the next guy, but when did we start SHOUTING everytime we say SPAM, SPAMMING, or SPAMMERS?

We don't HAVE TO BE JUST LIKE THE SPAMMERS (in only six months!)

Click to remove [signmeupformore.com] and never hear from this /. user again oulsscs tyhecfz gy pz

kephqfh jt qwuixcdkejmpki bk niomleh n
t u

Here's a novel idea

Let's pass a law that forces district attorneys to actually prosecute spammers that break the law.

Excuse me, I have a question...

As a law-abiding spammer, how am I supposed to send both spam complying with the Louisiana law (including "adv-adult") and the Michigan law [slashdot.org] (containing "ADV:" as the first four characters?)

It would seem to me that I have to do something like this:

Subject: ADV: enlarge your penis [adv-adult]

I hope no new state laws are introduced, these are making it really tough to stay profitable.

I wonder if it's still legal to send

Subject: ADV: adv-adultery webcams!

The 'adv' still looks nasty, but I can't think of any word that ends in 'adv'.

Incompetent Louisiana Officials

As someone who spent a great many years living in Louisiana and following/participating in Louisiana politics, I know for a fact that the officials of the "great state of Louisiana" are quite incompetent. After all, we have the 2nd worst roads in the nation and the 2nd worst education system in the nation (thank god for Mississippi!).

The internet and the Law

>> leaves you wondering if "officials" have any clue how SPAMMERS operate..."

Actually it leaves me wondering if you have any idea how the law operates. As silly as this legislation may at first appear, you have to realize that (mostly) nothing is illegal unless there is a LAW to make it so. Yes, spam is already illegal in many states, but creating a law where spammers must insert adv-adult in their subject line is another point where would-be prosecutors can trip spammers up with, thus increasing penalties and even prison time. Its like when a murder is really heinous, prosecutors dont just try someone for murder 1, they get them on just about every count thats feasible to the case.

/dev/null

What's to stop someone from say Africa, Taiwan or Korea from sending you advertisements? Absolutely nothing. While the concept is nice in theory, this law seems to be nothing more than someone doing something for possible future elections resume padding.

So let's say you limit those in the US from sending you spam, what are you going to do when they start relaying from borked out servers abroad... Better yet what can you do. Waste taxpayer money tracking down spammers abroad... Let's see $5000 to track them, another $1000 to bring them down here to face the music, $100,000k miminum for some sort of farce trial for something you could have taken care of with spamassassin.

Boy oh boy I don't know who is dumber the politician who passed this law or the spammer I hit d on using mutt.

so what are we gonna do?

"leaves you wondering if "officials" have any clue how SPAMMERS operate..." "

There is no wondering here, we all know they don't have a clue in the world. But whats being done about that? I don't see any huge initiatives to educate our law makers into how these things really work. So what can Slashdot do to educate these people as to how spam really works?

Organ donors

# Bar the use of state tax dollars to cover organ transplants for inmates who were sentenced to the death penalty or life in prison and have exhausted their appeals.

That's really ridiculous. There are few enough organs as there are. If they're there, then why should these go to waste?

This law worked so well in California...

California has a law requiring the same sort of warning in the subject line. It became the law January 1, 1999.

In the first months after the law went into effect the percentage of spam attacks with "ADV" or ADV:Adult" in the subject line was a full 5% on average. This compared to the months before it became law, where only 1 out of 20 spam attacks contained these in the subject line.

This in the state with over 1/10th of the U.S.'s population.

It Might Help Non-LA Residents A Bit...

Bubba Catts and Ronnie Scelson, two of the biggest spam kings around (and two of the most public), are Louisiana residents, and they do porn spam. The anti-spam crowd knows their stuff by sight and can easily provide info to the appropriate authorities. If they can get Bubba and Ronnie on spam charges and drain their bank accounts before they wimp out and move to Florida like the rest of them, maybe it would send a message to the spam community that LEOs and legislators are serious.

Oh, who am I kidding? I spent six months living in Louisiana, enough time to know that they'd screw up a one-person masturbation party.

Doomed.

This concept is doomed.

Why should the spammers follow the new law - they are already breaking the law by sending the spam, so why would they abide by this new one?

As an aside, I recently received a whole set of spam messages with the following footer:

Please dont send any abuse about us , or You 'll be spammed again and again! LOL!

Why is "SPAM" in caps?

Why do some people insist on writing the word "spam" and all its derivatives in all capital letters? Those people need a clue; they don't need to shove the fucking word in my face every time I read it. KNOCK IT OFF!

Mozilla Thunderbird automatically filters spam

I just started using it and it's worked perfect so far.

I find it a little scary that small programs like Firebird and Thunderbird are infinitely more usable than MS products while costing infintely less. seems like some kind of conservation law is being violated.

The problem with 'banning' spam or sex products...

..is:

1. Your ISP will fine you for using the word 'penis' in an email to a friend without the appropriate header.

2. Your ISP will fine you for sending a joke to 10 friends (unsolicited? - yes. bulk? - yes.)

3. The law remains impotent 'cos the spammer is in a different country or can be PROVED to be so.

Think 1. and 2. are daft? Well, your credit card company and bank fine you for transiently exceeding their limits, even though they want you to do so so they can charge you interest.

The law is a step in the wrong direction - namely limiting what U.S. citizens can do on the Internet, whilst making no difference to the whole.

Let me be the first to say...

As a geek who understands how spammers operate and grew up in Louisiana, let me be the first to say...

I'm sorry. I'm so very, very sorry.

Aug 18 Headline

'Spammers Outsourcing Rate Doubles' ...

This may seem to be a good move actually as there is a new marketing push to use solicitied email by Fortune 500ers but; the fact is that some people like getting mail and some do not. Providing the means to sort it all out in the mail box should be the responsibility of the service provider or originator and not the consumer? I think not. Louisiana is pushing away new buisiness with this frivolous law.

Beware - tampered article.

The above article has been tampered - not just a mirror.

* Require welfare recipients to immediately begin looking for work once they receive their ass cheeks and to learn how to write a resume or prepare for an interview for a minimum number of hours each week or risk losing their benefits.

Re:The sites already SDed, heres the text.

+5 Troll

Good job mods. You could have either 1.read the story and saw it was not sd'd or 2.actually read the post and noticed the alterations.

Protect the less abled members of society.

But according to media reports, some Louisiana-based spammers vow they have a way around the ban. They will originate messages through overseas Internet service providers. Louisiana officials say that won't matter -- the ban is directed at any messages aimed toward Louisiana e-mail addresses.

and...

* Outlaw the execution of the mentally retarded, to comply with state and U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

"Oh, you are a Louisiana legislator? I guess we can't seek the death penalty then..."

Re:Louisiana gets email?

Slashdot, Michigan HELLO!!

Re:Spamming

The thing that allows spam to continue, is that num nuts, like most AOL users, keep buying into this crap. I think that a campaign that exposes, illustrates and informs the "newbie" crowd to what spam really is and its fraudulent nature, would make a difference.

I wish I could agree with you, but I can't. The reason is that the education campaign would have to have a success rate that is impossible to achieve. If a spammer reaches one million human recipients over a long weekend of spamming and manages to get ten orders, it's still profitable to the spammer. Imagine the incredible cost and massive coordination that it would take to mount an education campaign that would reduce the current take of 50-100 orders (or whatever it is, depending on "product" being hawked) to 10-20 per million. Even if it were successful, all the spammer has to do to counter the campaign is to send more spam.

Beating sense into the numbnuts who buy the crap is an effort of diminishing returns. I am totally with you on the desired goal, but it simply won't work. Passing some laws with teeth and using them to put physical barriers such as iron bars and concrete walls between spammers and computers with Internet connections is the only thing that'll actually prevent spammers from spamming.