Tech Legislation: The Digital Dirty Dozen

vwalke writes: "The libertarian think tank, Cato Institute, recently released a summary of the worst Tech Legislative Measures of the 107th congress. A few of the bills receiving honors: another breakup of the telecommunications system (S. 1364), regulation on electronic advertising and marketing activities (S.792 and H.R. 2246), authorization of a multi-state Internet tax cartel (S.512 and H.R. 1410), regulation of unsolicited e-mail (H.R. 718), requiring non-discriminatory licensing of online content like movies and music while also mandating copy protection schemes (H.R. 2724), prohibition of online gambling (H.R. 556 and H.R. 3215), and creation of a broadband tax credit (S. 88 and H.R. 267). A very detailed, informative analysis. Keep in mind it's coming with a libertarian slant."

A tad overreaching

[PurpleBob]

Regulating spam is one of the "dirty dozen" of tech legislation? Spam is an obvious undesired drain on the Internet, which is usually based on trespass and fraud (abusing open relays and forging headers). Spam is not protected speech.

Granted, the measures to attempt to control spam that the government has passed have been watered-down, useless pieces of tripe, like the law saying that every spam must provide a "remove" address. How helpful. But I'd hardly consider these bills the most "destructive pieces of technology legislation". Save that for the DMCA.

This article is what has made me certain that I am not a Libertarian.

you're-free-to-choose-a-grain-of-salt dept. EH!

[DrSkwid]

Keep in mind it's coming with a libertarian slant.

Oh yes, thanks for the warning.

Funny how NY Times stories don't get tagged :
"watch out, they are ardent free market capitalists"

or the diet of ZDnet and CNet stories don;t get tagged or any of the others.

You may as well put "here's a work of fiction from a bunch of liars and fraudsters"

jeesh!

Re:you're-free-to-choose-a-grain-of-salt dept. EH!

[vwalke]

No. I would say that ANY time you read an article you should consider the source. I happen to agree with most (but not all) of what Cato publishes. That doesn't change the fact that I keep in mind their political and philosophical leanings when I read it.

And, believe me, I do the same thing when I read the Washington Post and New York Times. ZDNet also gets a big dose of a reality check.

At least with an organization like Cato, they explicitly state their goals.

Wot no SSSCA?

[cabalamat2]

I see no mention of the SSSCA or DMCA.

The Cato institute supposedly favours "liberty" - their slogan is "25 years of advancing liberty". But that apparently doesn't include the liberty to help blind people read electronic books. Nor does it include the liberty to use Linux.

Re:Wot no SSSCA?

[cabalamat2]

Actually, the SSSCA is listed. I got it wrong.

*blush*

Cato SUCKS

[PD]

They don't seem to understand that legal spam is the same thing as

1) legally allowing anyone to let their dogs shit anywhere, anytime
2) revoking all trespassing laws
3) allowing anybody to put anything into a mailbox. What if I decided that all my neighbors needed to have a pound of rotten chicken in their mailbox?

Re:Cato SUCKS

[Pii]

Cato does not suck. They simply don't advocate Public Solutions to Private Problems.

How is it the responsibility of the Federal Government to keep you spam free?

Spammers have a right to say whatever they want... They do not have the right to ensure that you listen. To that end:

Install Postfix, subscribe to a RBL, and get on with your life.

The last thing we need these days are more regulations.

Re:Cato SUCKS

[Deagol]

Install Postfix, subscribe to a RBL, and get on with your life.

I'm sure I won't be the first to point out that this is a reactive measure, one that helps once most of the resources of processing mail have been used up.

Just look at the past spam articles on slashdot. Some ISPs are reporting a very non-trivial amount of their email traffic is spam. Should I be forced to add another T1 or another box to my ISP setup because 30% of my mail traffic is spam? I think not.

Re:Cato SUCKS

[Pii]

While I admit that a lot of the mail you may be recieving is SPAM, compared to the bandwidth that other services such as HTTP, FTP, or P2P, are using, it's probably not enough to justify another T-1 on it's own.

Let's be honest... Your enterprise is not AOL, and you don't have 25M+ users.

I'll concede that legitimate mail traffic, especially when factoring in attachments, can be significant, but that's not what the spammers are sending you.

They send 2k messages, usually about 30% of which is plain text, and the remainder is HTML formatted, echoing the same thing. If you get 40 such spam messages a day, that's 80k. Let's double it and round up... Call it 200k. Does it even consume the amount of bandwidth to load the Slashdot front page one time, with all of the graphics, etc? Does it even come close to the amount of traffic used in loading a topic page with some 150-200 comments?

Sure... If you have 2000 users, it adds up, but again, with that many users, you're probably considering adding another T-1 anyway.

What's the protocol breakdown of the traffic running across your company's pipe(s)?

(Please don't take this out of context... I hate spam just the same as you do, and it'd be nice if was gone. I just don't think that we should always rely of government to solve our problems. They're already far too caught up in our business as it is. Let's stop inviting them!)

Re:Cato SUCKS

[PD]

How is it the responsibility of the Federal Government to keep you spam free?

Same way that my fax machine is spam free. And if someone sends me spam as a fax, I can carry out my bloodthirsty vicious vendetta against them in a court of law.

Re:Cato SUCKS

[Pii]

I'm not saying that the Federal Government hasn't interceded into matters that do not concern them.

I'm saying that it isn't their place.

Aside from the propriety of such a course, look at it from a pragmatic standpoint.

Are you content to move at the speed of Government, or might you be better served by using the readily available tools at your disposal here, and now, to deal with the problem on your own?

Re:Cato SUCKS

[PD]

Our wonderful tools cannot keep up at all. Time to make it illegal so that individuals can bring suits against spammers for damages. A law that lets a small claims court judge make a decision without having to think helps greatly.

That's not moving at the speed of government, it's more like unleasing hordes of disgruntled citizens