Interview With Congressional Spam Foe

gabe writes: "Smart Computing has an interview with U.S. Rep. Gene Green (D, Tex.), a leading proponent of anti-spam legislation. The interview focuses on the provisions of his two congressional bills (warts and all) and on his motivations for fighting spam." Politics on all other issues aside, I think Green has a position on spam that equals or tops nearly any I've seen from a politician.

Will this stop spam?

[tsarina]

Even if the spammer does put an address, etc., like Green's asking, he's still are able to send buttloads of spam. All you can do is complain, really. If the spammer doesn't have an address, etc. on it, it's illegal, but that absence and other spammer tactics means that it would be harder to track the spammer down and prosecute them. And would the DoJ be too concerned with going after spammers with more pressing issues at hand (Sept. 11, DMCA havoc, etc.)?

I applaud Congressman Green, for he does seem to be fairly tech-literate and reasonable. I just worry his anti-spam bill may be toothless. But at least he understands some of the issues around the tech world. Maybe he could do something about the DMCA next....

No, but...

[Sloppy]

Even if the spammer does put an address, etc., like Green's asking, he's still are able to send buttloads of spam. All you can do is complain, really.

If we ass/u/me that spammers will obey the law, it lets you do one other thing too: filter. If Joe Schmoe, law-obiding spammer, starts putting "From Joe Schmoe's Spam Shack" in everything he sends, then you can block everything he sends. Yeah, I know, I know, the blocking is after he's already consumed your bandwidth. Still better than the current situation, though, where every spam Joe Schmoe sends might have no regexps in common.

I think bills like this may be a good start. It's still somewhat spam-friendly and "opt out" but still tightens things a little bit, without getting (too far?) into 1st Ammendment territory, etc so it won't be terribly controversial. Most of the criticism I see here, is that the bill doesn't go far enough.

We can take a mile later, but let's grab this first inch first, provided there isn't any poison in it (i.e. it's all forward w/out any consessions). I wish the story had the bill's text so it would be easy to make sure.

"And there is nothing new under the sun..."

[COAngler]

I think it's worth noting that this is just another opt-out bill, giving each spambag his one bite at the apple.

Well, you let enough people take their bite, and you don't have any apple left for yourself. All the bill requires is contact information and some sort of remove link.

Just about every spam has some sort of contact, although that contact is the spam's payload. It's the toll-free phone number that you call to order the toner cartridges. It's the website that you visit to order the herbal viagra. It's the Post Office box that you use to piss money away on useless "credit repair" scams. Or it's the drop-box address on Yahoo/Hotmail/Netaddress/whatever to request more information on the laundry balls.

And the people who trust remove lists are either naive or not very bright. Spammers are well-known for using them merely to harvest more addresses to sell. Why would anybody trust them? You might want to look into Rodney Joffe's SafeEPS system. It was intended to be a remove list developed by a known and trusted anti-spammer, and the DMA pretended to be interested. Joffe offered to sell it to the US Direct Marketing Association for one dollar-and the DMA refused. They make their money by forcing their spew on people. Taking away their ability to market to people who don't want it takes away their reason-to-be. SafeEPS, of course, died after that. No spammer is going to use it.

If the gentleman from Texas wants a legitimate spam bill, he needs to think more in terms of opt-in. Opt-in means no marketing email unless you actually REQUEST marketing email. In other words, the whole thing goes only with the permission of ALL of the people involved. Considering that the recipient has to pay to receive the crap, it seems only fair that he should decide just what gets sent to him.

Or we could do something even more sensible and leave Congress out of it. MAPS [mail-abuse.org] had something going with their RBL. They're dying now, under the weight of frivolous but expensive lawsuits and a very questionable settlement with Exactis/Experian. However, SPEWS [spews.org] seems to be taking their place. Those two organizations, SPEWS in particular, are doing more to fight spam than even the best new law could hope for.

But the bills referenced in the article above? Somewhere between useless and worse-than-useless.

Re:Spam Fighters

[cdrguru]

I have to argue that the current "spam fighters" are a collection of people with a clearly anti-business agenda.

OK, if you are an individual and you want only to get email from people you specifically authorize, fine - spam blocking or whitelisting is going to work for you. But, remember - if you ask for help with a product and they email a reply back to you - you aren't going to get it.

But, if you are a business that is trying to send email to customers, people requesting information and support and so forth, you are going to find there are semi-anonymous third parties blocking your email to these people. People that have requested information or purchased something that you have a business need to communicate with.

Spam blocking has taken on a life of its own. While a lot of the lists are automated in some fashion, there are more that if someone decides your ISP (or netblock provider) is spam-friendly there is no recourse. You aren't sending email to anyone that subscribes to their service. Period. No recourse in many cases. You can always switch netblock providers or just get another T1.

This is absurd on the face of it and is clearly something that people find actionable. This isn't a "solution" or anything of the sort. Spam blocking is an excuse to decommericialize the Internet and there are people that believe it should be that way. "No way you're going to make money on my Internet." According to many of the "operators" of these spam-blocking lists, it is the responsibility of every person to insure the decommercialization of the Internet. Until the Internet is business-free, there will always be ads and spam. This then justifies whatever means there are available for eliminating commercial enterprises from using the Internet.

Oh, and try to find someone to sue - SPEWS is intentionally set up in a fashion so the people behind it are both distributed and anonymous. There are no responsible parties. If no one is responsible, then how can this be reliable in any way? But, more and more organizations and ISP's are subscribing to various lists like this because they think they have a responsibility to protect their customers.

For my company, we are completely unable to use any sort of blocking - we have to answer inquiries from customers no matter where they originate from or what keywords (like "sell" or "credit") might appear in them. Yes, we sell a software product on the Internet. While I would like to de-commercialize the Internet just as much as other people would, sadly someone has not decommercialized housing, food and clothing.