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Spam Your Rights Online

Minnesota Spam And Privacy Act Takes Effect 20

Posted by timothy from the right-to-be-left-alone dept.
2cv writes "The Minnesota Internet Consumer Information Privacy and Commercial Electronic Mail Solicitation Act takes effect today. An article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press focuses on the spam aspect of the law. However, its chief author admits the measure has no teeth. While not an earth-shattering event, the signing of the bill by former Governor Jesse Ventura did break ground. It was the nation's first online privacy bill. Jesse jokes are welcomed but likely to be modded down as irrelevant."
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Minnesota Spam And Privacy Act Takes Effect More

Minnesota Spam And Privacy Act Takes Effect

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  • A first step (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:51PM (#5415938) Homepage Journal
    There still will be spam, but some will be identifiable, at least the ones that have some respect for law or customers.

    As a side effect, the others that send spam could be easily clasified as foreign or without care about law and costumers, and maybe with this some people that efectively buy spamvertised products will not follow that kind of spammers

  • Is who the hell are these people who actually read spam and then buy something advertised in it???

    • Re:What I'd like to know... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Second_Derivative ( 257815 ) on Sunday March 02, 2003 @09:45AM (#5418205)
      There are a lot of stupid people in this world. You only need about 50 to respond to a mailing to break even, and many spammers have mailings lists of millions.

      I don't think that's the issue here though. I'm increasingly beginning to think that spammers are just big time trolls. There's loads of people on the internet, yet there's only 200 major spammers. That's not a lot of people. We all know ads are incredibly annoying, and we all know to what lengths these people go to to evade spam filters. Honestly I think these few people just get their jollies by knowing they pissed off a million people today.

  • Who is Going to (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Enforce this law? spammers have already been classified as the antichrist(s) surely they wont go to all of the work of finding out where people are from and deciding whether or not to send them e-mail.

  • A good start. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jlaxson ( 580785 )
    The law is a good start, but if we could effectively identify spam and track spammers, there would be so many filters in place that many of us wouldn't even consider spam a problem. That said, let's hope for the best.
    • It's not enough to just know who is sending spam. The large spam factories make use of hundreds of mail relays across every provider in every country that is willing to sell them a connection. IP addresses of relays change about as fast as they can be detected, and this says nothing of open smtp relays or formmail scripts on web servers that are exploited. The bottom line is that if a spammer is peddling a product or service, there is someone along the communication chain that will be able to identify them because they need to ultimately get paid. I think the key follow that chain as far as the law allows you to, and hold the that party responsible for either making reparations, or identifying the next person in the chain.
  • I guess the SPAM folks are required to put "ADV" in the subject line. So lets do the math: 3 extra bytes TIMES about 200 SPAMS/day TIMES 2,000,000 internet users in MN TIMES 365 days/year * 8 bits/byte = an extra 3,263Gb of email traffic we don't need.
    • > an extra 3,263Gb of email traffic we don't need.

      Not a problem.

      The bottleneck is in human time/attention, not network bandwidth, of which there is extreme surplus.

    • Erm, there are actually not that many people who get that much junk email per day. Personally I manage 2-4 pieces per day (I'm careful about where I type my email addy). My gf gets probably 10-15, and she will give her address to website that asks.

      I'm also an admin for a small business and of about 100 users, there are few who get more than 5-10 pieces of junk mail/day...and these are non-technical sales people who will fill out any web form for any reason at all...I'm extremely curious to see if this law has any effect (I live in MN)...

      I'm just sayin...

  • ...Privacy?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Sunday March 02, 2003 @01:50PM (#5419118)
    Article 1.2.5. Personally identifiable information. "Personally identifiable information" means information that identifies: (snip) any of the contents of a consumer's data storage devices.

    Article 1.3. Disclosure of personal information required. Provides for when an ISP must disclose personally identifiable information about a consumer: (snip) pursuant to a court order in a civil proceeding on a showing of compelling need that cannot be accommodated by other means;

    So does this mean that an ISP, under pretext of obtaining a suspected file sharer's personal information, could also be compelled to provide the contents of that person's hard drives?

    Probably not, I know.... but this privacy legislation has a hole large enough to drive the RIAA through. They certainly could have written it better.
    • Probably not, I know.... but this privacy legislation has a hole large enough to drive the RIAA through. They certainly could have written it better.

      Then I would encourage you to do something about it. Start here [circusnews.com], and make your voice count.

  • Jesse Ventura Jokes Ahoy! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now that Jesse the <body> Ventura been featured on a /. article he will be known to the masses as Jesse <td valign="top" bgcolor="#663300"> Ventura.
    your turn!
  • Subd. 5. Blocking receipt or transmission. Permits an interactive computer service to block commercial e-mails that it reasonably believes are being sent or will be sent in violation of this section. The blocking service is not liable in an action by a recipient for good faith blocking.

    Seems an ISP isn't liable if they accidentaly delete some false positives.
  • From reading the link to the law itself, this looks like a good start. I especially liked the fact that it clearly spells out that a private citizen can go after a spammer for not putting the ADV/ADLT-ADV tag at the beginning of the subject line (A2.7.1.2). And at $10/non-compliant SPAM, it should add up to enough, pretty quick, to make going after them worth while. It'll be interesting to see if this holds up in court.

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