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Spam Your Rights Online

Australian Considers Outlawing Spam 189

Posted by michael from the get-medieval dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on spam down under. I guess it goes to show that if something that bothers us also bothers enough politicians then something may be done. Interestingly, the article discusses international co-operation wrt spam. Good thing too. With only 2% of the global economy, it'll take more than Australia to beat the spam problem. Perhaps someone should send a 'group letter' to all relevant politicians in various countries to start co-operating? :)" Update: 04/16 11:56 GMT by H : There's another article on the subject as well, running in The Australian.
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Australian Considers Outlawing Spam More

Australian Considers Outlawing Spam

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  • Get real (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sad Loser ( 625938 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:47AM (#5742857)

    This is a typical Australian head-in-the-sand position (IAAA): 'ban' it and it will go away.

    Unfortunately Senator Alston does not seem to appreciate that we are connected to the rest of the world by this internet thing, and it may just be that courts in Russia and China will not recognise Australian juristiction in this matter.

    It would be better if they saved their breath and did something useful like investigate some sort of token-based email, and maybe funded its development.

    • Kangaroo Court (Score:4, Funny)

      by SunPin ( 596554 ) <slashspam @ c y b e r ista.com> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:19AM (#5742979) Homepage
      Considering that Russia and China have adopted both the "ban it" methodology and rely on kangaroo courts, they might get along with the Australians just fine.
      • Most Australian ISPs have an acceptable-use policy which, from what I've seen, is fairly strictly enforced. There are a couple of notable exceptions, but the industry as a whole is vigorous and competitive in a comparatively small community, and ISPs can be made to hurt fairly badly if they allow their users to transgress against accepted codes of conduct. I've known of quite a number of cases where spammers got the plug pulled on them.

        My point is, in other words, that if someone doesn't know how to behave

    • Re:Get real (Score:4, Insightful)

      by etxjrh ( 599093 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:25AM (#5743000)

      Nah, at least you can prosecute Australians sending spam to other Australians and perhaps abroad. If every country banned it then spam would decrease dramatically.

      Fair enough, it might not help you now but it's a step in the right direction in my opinion.

    • This is a typical Australian "do something about it" position. Granted, it may not always be the best thing straight up, but we are willing to modify as required.

      If you don't like it there is always Europe and the UN...........go hide there.

    • Re:Get real (Score:3, Informative)

      by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
      Unfortunately Senator Alston does not seem to appreciate that we are connected to the rest of the world

      Yes he does:

      The report concedes that difficulties identifying spammers and the lack of jurisdiction over offshore spammers means legislation alone will not solve the problem.

      It recommends Australia work with other countries to combat spam, citing the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network as a good model for co-operation.

      He may an arsehole but not a complete idiot.

    • I agree. "Banning spam" will not do a thing to stop the spammers. The result would be that government grows bigger and more expensive, and we lose even more of what's left of our liberties. The only fair and reasonable thing to do is to make it possible for private parties (ISPs for example) to sue other private parties (the spammers) for network abuse. Otherwise, leave me out of it (that is, leave my tax dollars out of it).

    • Re:Get real (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      Antispam legislation is fine and could work brilliantly if it's done right. The problem is, as many people have noticed, the international scope of the Internet and the fact spammers take advantage of that prevents it working. So what you need to do is side step the issue of international cooperation by making the ISP liable for failure to take action against spammers on their network and have a government body responsible for the prosecution and any revenues generated go into goverment coffers.

      The way

    • Re:Get real (Score:4, Informative)

      by E-prospero ( 30242 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @10:23AM (#5743989) Homepage
      True, this legislation won't have a big effect on international spamhausen, but it can be used to nail the ones that we know exist and operate from within Australia. For example, The Which Company, also trading as Business Seminars Australia and T3 Direct:

      ABN: 90 091 728 620
      Postal: P.O. Box 159, Northbridge W.A. 6865
      Phone: (08) 9463 7807 Fax: (08) 9463 7808

      These guys send me 2 or three spams a day selling their 'Positive Workplace Strategies' workshops, and 'guaranteed sales handbooks'.

      This particular bunch of inbreds gained recent notoriety by attempting to sue a local individual who put a spam block on them. /. reported this, but I can't find the link... here [smh.com.au] is an article in the SMH about the case.

      If this legislation served only to eliminate this bunch from my inbox, it would serve the eliminating a known and prolific source of spam from my inbox, plus give me a warm fuzzy feeling for weeks... and I'm certain that BSA/Which are not the only Australian based spammers.

      Russ %-)
    • I'm all for bombing governments that refuse to curb their spamming problem. That includes states within the US, such as Florida.

  • Spam down, under??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:47AM (#5742859) Journal
    Most spam I get is of the 'down, under' category :-). Incidentally, is hotmail banned Down Under? How else can they outlaw spam?

  • "Australian"?!?!? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just one single citizen is going to outlaw SPAM? Perhaps tomorrow we'll see a story about a Cameroonian deciding to jaywalk?

  • in ex-yugoslavia, slovenia.. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..spam *is* illegal.
  • Okay, so there's two countries with anti-spam laws. A spammer in country A spams accounts in country B.

    Do people in country B complain to the police in country A? Can country A prosecute their spammer for spamming people covered by different local laws?

    More bizarrely, would there be extradition of spammers between countries, as if they'd committed a murder or buglary?

    • Re:How would this international cooperation work? (Score:5, Informative)

      by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:56AM (#5742894) Homepage Journal
      Yes. It depends on the law, but yes.

      There are UK laws specifically making UK citizens who commit criminal acts abroad responsible under UK law. i.e. enjoy dodgy recreational pursuits while on holiday, come back and go to jail.

      That you are actually committing the crime against another country while IN your own country certainly puts you under your local jurisdiction.

      This law would protect the world from Aussie spam more than it would protect Australia from the worlds spam!

      • Re:How would this international cooperation work? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Marlor ( 643698 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:41AM (#5743073)

        This law would protect the world from Aussie spam more than it would protect Australia from the worlds spam!

        That's basically the idea. The report states that the Australian Government should push for the creation of an international agreement on outlawing spam (i.e. similar to the current international IP agreements).

        Introducing domestic anti-spam laws is obviously the first step to achieving this. It would be difficult to convince the international community to introduce similar laws if Australia didn't have them in place themself.

        Despite this, until some form of international consensus is reached, these laws are basically just a symbolic gesture.

      • "There are UK laws specifically making UK citizens who commit criminal acts abroad responsible under UK law"

        That's bizzare and rather perverse... I mean, you go to another country, you're bound by THEIR laws, otherwise you'd get arrested. What if the two laws conflict? And never mind half the point of going some places (Amsterdam?) is getting away from stupid, restrictive laws.

        Suppose some guy comes from somewhere where guns are illegal. You want to try one out. You go to (say) the US to try out a

        • The most recent and popular of these laws is there to stop the 'Barrymore' effect where wealthy UK citizens go to asian countries to shag underage boys.

          Locally the governments are too keen on the tourist buck to do anything about it, and the cost of trial and detention would be too great. But the impact on the perception of the UK, not to mention the victims themselves, is damaging.

          Similarly football violence is in line for a similar law. If I and 20 of my mates go to Turkey specifically to kick some ass
      • This law would protect the world from Aussie spam more than it would protect Australia from the worlds spam!

        Very correct!
        Now, if only the USA would get through a similar law, the rest of the world would get rid of 90% of all spam!

        I cannot repeat it often enough: although about 50% of spam went through open relays in Korea or China, most of it really originated in USA and is intended for citizens of the USA. Other countries (like all of the EU!) already have laws which prohibit spamming.

        Wake up USA: th

    • Certainly an issue, but not an issue that hasn't been dealt with before in cases of mail fraud. As long as both countries have a low tolerance for the crime being committed, then the main problem is that it's an administrative hassle.

      Of course, the level of hassle required may make this highy inconvenient to actually prosecute a spammer. While annoying, spam is really only a minor inconvenience. Hardly worth the effort of tracking the guy down, getting multiple police forces, and arranging witness stat

  • Fingers crossed... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 26199 ( 577806 )

    ...but I'm not holding my breath.

    Still, it sounds like a step in the right direction...

    I guess the important question is... will America cooperate?

  • Now if only the US Senate would take note (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TekPolitik ( 147802 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:49AM (#5742868) Journal
    The proposal [noie.gov.au] in the Australian report [noie.gov.au] is to ban unsolicited commercial e-mail (opt-in). Now if only the US Senate would pay attention to that instead of introducing idiotic opt-out bills like the one recently introduced, that would actually increase spam [slashdot.org].
    • OK, great, outlaw spam in the U.S. Sounds like a plan few could argue against.

      Now what do you propose to do with the 95% of spam that originates from outside of the U.S.?

      • " 95% of spam that originates from outside of the U.S"
        This is a myth. I'm inclined to believe that 95% of the spam which APPEARS to originate from outside the US, actually has origins within the US.

        There is NO evidence in recorded history to suggest that the US suffers in silence due to problems originating outside. I challenge you to prove me wrong.

      • Now what do you propose to do with the 95% of spam that originates from outside of the U.S.?

        The same thing I plan to do about the bogeyman and other fictitious creatures.

      • For the record, The originating IPs of 98% of the spam I get are traceable to the US. about 1.6% comes from .kr and .jp, while the remainder comes from stragglers like .ru. Funny, .ru used to send just under 10% of my spam, so maybe they've seen the light :-)
        • It's strange. I have a Juno account that I've had for years and never got spam in...until about 3 months ago. Suddenly, I started getting 20+ spams per day in Korean (how did I manage to get on a list like *that*--I don't even speak the language).

          Relatively little of it is pr0n, surprisingly enough. It's mostly foot powder, dog food, knick-knacks, etc. And the only reason I know what's being advertised is that every single piece of mail is 20 KB of HTML stuffed to the brim with large product images.

          I've

      • Now what do you propose to do with the 95% of spam that originates from outside of the U.S.?

        If I could eliminate all the spam I get that originates in the US, I would have 95% less spam. I get MMFs asking me to send money to American morons, cable TV decoders for Americn TVs, credit cards "only valid in the USA", etc. How the assholes sending it routed it via overseas servers is irrelevant. The problem is in America. The "spam kings" are all American.

    • Proposal is plausible (Score:4, Informative)

      by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert DOT merkel AT benambra DOT org> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:15AM (#5742968) Homepage
      The proposals in the report are actually quite reasonably well thought out - somebody in Alston's department must have half a brain after all. It acknowledges that spam is an international problem, and needs to be dealt with at an international level. It also makes the point that domestic legislation is a good idea as a starting point for international action.

      Some other interesting points:

      • It concentrates exclusively on commercial spam. I think this is reasonable, as commercial speech raises the fewest concerns when it comes to infringing on free speech, and makes up 99.9% of the spam I receive.
      • Requires all commercial email to contain the physical address as well as an accurate electronic address of the sender, and makes it a criminal offence to not provide such.
      • Points out that a lot of spam already infringes existing Australian legislation. For instance, we have laws against advertising prescription drugs. They recommend that resources be given to prosecuting spammers under those laws.

      The only thing I'd say that was wrong with this bill is that it places the onus on a government body to initiate proceedings. I think that there should be a way, indeed an incentive, for individuals to chase spammers through the courts as well.

      • commercial speech raises the fewest concerns when it comes to infringing on free speech

        This is false. It raises no more concerns about free speech than any other type of spam.

        Free speech is the right to say what you want. It is not the right to force people to listen, nor is it the right to force people to pay you to speak.

        Spammers have the right to speak, however they do not have the right to speak to me if I don't want them to, nor do they have the right to waste my bandwidth.

        The whole "free speech
        • ...that any legislation that might be potentially twisted for use as an attack on free speech should be very carefully thought out before its introduction.

          Additionally, as a general rule legislation should be as narrowly targetted as possible. Therefore, as commercial spam is the only sort of spam causing real issues at the moment, go after it and nothing else.

  • As an Australian I think that we should setup a decent internet infrastructure before we outlaw spam!
    Judging from the level of incompetance shown by the vast majority of Australian politicians I've seen, I doubt they have a hope in hell of outlawing spam!
    Besides, what's spam to one person could be golden information to another. Right?
    OK maybe not...
  • So we should spam politicians in several countries to have them get rid of spam... you know, that just might work. Perhaps someone should register the various @house.gov addresses at a few online casinos and watch the fireworks...
  • Most of mine comes from servers listed in the APNIC. What needs to be done is for countries like china to crack down, but from what I've been hearing, they are trying to.
  • 2% global economy with 0.3% of the world's population? Not bad I suppose... maybe it would be higher if government & schools used Linux :-)

    0.3% = (18,000,000/6,000,000,000) * 100

    Estimate of world's population may be found here:
    http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw

    Go Aussie go! :-)
    • We my only have 0.3% of the global population, and 2.6% of the worlds internet users , but apparantly we recieve 16% of the worlds spam. http://www.caube.org.au/australia.htm
    • I can only think the poster means 2% of the G7. Japan 120m US 260m UK 60m Germany 85m Canada 30m France 60m Italy 60m --- 675 / 18m = 37.5 1/37.5 *100 = 2.6%

    • Linux? (Score:1)

      by jjga ( 612356 )
      maybe it would be higher if government & schools used Linux

      Or maybe not. I don't really the relevance of Linux on that issue.

  • And next (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @06:56AM (#5742895) Journal
    We will outlaw speeding! that'll surely get people to drive safely and stuff.

    That said, I guess it's better than having legalized spam. Though, otoh junk fax law applies to spam already anyway, methinks?

    I am reminded of a quote from War and Peace - "Everybody can write regulations, but it's finding ways to enforce them that's the difficult / tricky part."
    • From a purely Darwinian perspective, I'm all for repealing speeding laws for the interstate but not for surface streets... on the interstate, all the genes that think they can drive fast but can't will feel free to remove themselves from the pool... on surface streets, however, measuring the speed of oncoming cars to take a turn would become difficult and become an overly manic scenario. With the laws in place, some people actually respect them even though getting a speeding ticket is less likely than winn
    • We will outlaw speeding! that'll surely get people to drive safely and stuff.

      And amazingly, this works for the most part. Visit Germany sometime, take a spin on the Autobahn. No speed limit, and people cruise along at speeds well beyond human reaction times.

      Return home, and suddenly everyone is going a lot slower.

      Of course, if your argument was 'some people will disobey laws, so there's no point in having any', then just ignore me.

  • Sure, things like this will weed out the non-technical spammers, but anyone that has any knowledge whatsoever will just move on to another smtp server.

    With this technique of outlawing, maybe nstead of 5 people a day trying to increase my bust size, maybe I'll only get 4 a day.

    The only real way to get rid of spam is to make every user have some unique identification number (SS#, etc) tied to their email addresses. However, no one will want to get rid of spam enough to have to attach such personal informa

  • 2-way authentication solves the spam problem? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 1337_h4x0r ( 643377 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:00AM (#5742911)

    Lets say you get an email from bob@yahoo.com .. and your mail server then contacts yahoo's mail server (looked up by the official DNS record) to make sure that bob@yahoo.com is really the one who sent the email. If he's not, trash it. If he is, keep it.

    What does this do for spam? Allows you to block it! Since all email addresses would then be verifiable, and tracked to a specific domain/user, spam-abusers could either be silenced at the source (their ISP) or silenced at the destination (your spam filter killing that whole domain). Sure there's lots of domains out there to use, but a simple master-list of "spam domains/users" maintained online would quickly whittle the spam down. What do you guys think?

    • I disagree... After installing TMDA [tmda.net] I have been getting more spam. Actually it is quite funny, since I don't see any of them normally. I just checked all my spams with tmda-pending (I was bored), and I got the Nigerian email a couple weeks ago...

      So what does TMDA do? It sends a reply asking to confirm that address. I receive a follow up from the Nigerian people. TMDA sends another reply. I get the Nigerian peeps again (they have a ton of gold just for me). TMDA sends a reply... this happened eight

    • Re:2-way authentication solves the spam problem? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:54AM (#5743129) Homepage Journal
      Something's even easier, and it already exists: Authenticated SMTP. You need to authenticate with the SMTP server when you send mail, just like you authenticate for POP/IMAIL. If this was adopted everywhere, it would solve many problems:

      It would cut down on the amount of spam from 'spam newbies'.

      It would allow for the creation of a blacklist on non-authenticated SMTP servers. This would encourage those not running authenticated SMTP to do so.

      It would also fix the 'no roaming' SMTP problem. I could travel abroad and still send mail thru my ISP's SMTP server, since there would no longer be any need to restrict SMTP access by IP address space (though doing both would allow for extra security measures).

      You could trace back the originating user. Now, user accounts could still get hacked, but it's an added measure of security.

      There's also a big flaw in your suggestion. Such a system would allow for easier harvesting of email addresses. Someone could easilly write a piece of software to check for valid accounts, with the added benifit of not suffering from bounceback messages!

    • your mail server then contacts yahoo's mail server (looked up by the official DNS record) to make sure that bob@yahoo.com is really the one who sent the email.

      And how is yahoo's mail server supposed to know if bob@yahoo.com is really the one who sent the mail?

      If I have a yahoo account, and I'm using kmail to compose and send mail, yahoo's servers will never know if I really sent the mail.

      Next, it provides nothing that doesn't already exist, and doesn't do anything to actually stop spam. There is alread
    • You don't understand how email works. I could set up a mail server, make up a name, spam, then take it down. I could do this as much as I want.
    • people use different email clients, don't you now? If I send email from Evolution or Mozilla Mail through my hoe ISP using myname@yahoo.com at From field - nothing wrong with that, but your suggestion won't work on it.

      The only way to make sure that bob@yahoo.com is bob@yahoo.com is to use e-signature. You keep the list of public keys of your friends (free for them, but you have to know and trust them personally) as well as the list of certificates of CA-servers you trust. Well-trusted CA-servers keep list

  • Only sounds good in a sound bite (Score:3, Interesting)

    by worst_name_ever ( 633374 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:00AM (#5742912)
    Aside from the obvious fact that banning spam in country X does little to stop spam coming out of country Y - i.e. Australians will still be getting Turkish porno spam - the precedent set by this worries me. We've already seen the far-reaching effects [slashdot.org] of the DMCA; depending on how it's worded, I coud forsee a blanket anti-spam law having a similar "scorched earth" outcome. The last thing I want is for some sleazy corporation suing to stop me from doing some perfectly legal and peaceful activity they don't like, on the grounds that they can weasel it into fitting a too-loose description in a piece of wrong-headed legislation designed to prevent something totally else.

    It seems like a better idea would be to apply technology instead of legislation to the problem -clamp down on Hotmail users who send a zillion emails a day, and lock down open mail relays - but IANAL.

  • Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by morgajel ( 568462 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:02AM (#5742919)
    There was an article a while back about a political group for geeks, right? something similar to the labor party or the populist party?
    perhaps we should have them mailing stuff out. I'd actually like to see slashdot get behind them a little more, keep it to ONLY geek related issues(no war protest/mongering).

    Wouldn't it be great if they mailed a message to your congressman saying "yeah, we have the slashdot population of 300,000 behind us. do something about _______ or you'll force us to vote, and you really don't want that."

    hell, if the farmers of the 1900's can do that with the populist party, why can't we? We count as a special interest group too.

    (please, if you have anything thoughts about it, reply. don't be rude or cynical.)
    • keep it to ONLY geek related issues(no war protest/mongering)

      And therein lies the problem. A political group will be run by the politically-minded, who will eventually use any clout created by the group they represent to advance their own personal agendas. It may be a cynical statement, but it is borne out by precedent.

      In an ideal world, there really wouldn't be such a thing as major political parties (in the US case, Democrats and Republicans). Instead, candidates would need to line up the endorseme

  • Forged Headers (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Jedi Binglebop ( 204665 )
    Forged headers are only possible because of bad code. This has been a recognised problem for years now, I read an article 5 years ago about the flawed code, and that it should be fixed (sendmail2 from memory).

    Why can't bad code be be fixed or updated in order to fix problems with legal implications, in prefence to "widespread usage"? Widespread usage is one reason Microsoft can't be bothered fixing more than just a couple of giant holes in the security of their OS, so doesn't that invalidate the argument
    • Forged headers are only possible because of bad code. This has been a recognised problem for years now, I read an article 5 years ago about the flawed code, and that it should be fixed (sendmail2 from memory).

      Is this a troll, or are you just really stupid?

      That fact that mail headers are forgeable is due to the nature of SMTP, not anyone's "bad code". While programs like sendmail are certainly poorly written, that has nothing to do with forgery. Moron.

      Go read this [cert.org], or perhaps RFC 821/2821. But whate

    • Re:Forged Headers (Score:4, Informative)

      by Eric Savage ( 28245 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @10:59AM (#5744211) Homepage
      Forging headers is not an exploit of a bug. Mail servers simply don't look at them. Why?

      Received Headers:

      1. Parsing and reversing all the domains in there is expensive. (as expensive as spam? probably not but see #3)
      2. There's nothing in the RFC that says all the headers have to match up end to end. A large email provider often has separate inbound and outbound mail servers so a mail getting forward will have headers from A to B and C to D, despite being a legitimate mail.
      3. Third, there is no requirement for reverse naming on mail servers. If there was then maybe #1 would be a valid tactic.

      The from header:

      This is what most non-technical people think of when they talk forged headers. Again, this is not an exploit, in fact its part of relaying which is a feature of the SMTP RFC. Some mail providers (like us) actually check the domain you are using when sending and stop you from sending the mail if you are faking it. However this isn't what most ISP's do because not many people actually use the Verizon or whatever address.

  • Austrailian Paliamentary Process... (Score:4, Funny)

    by FosterKanig ( 645454 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:05AM (#5742931)
    Bruno: [looking at spam] Ooh! Ah, that's it. I'm going to report this to me member of parliament.
    [yells out window] Hey, Gus! I got something to report to you. [Gus tends his swine]

    Gus: That's a bloody outrage, it is! I want to take this all the way to the Prime Minister.
    [they go down to a lake] Hey! Mr. Prime Minister! Andy!

    Andy: [floating naked on an inner tube with a beer] Eh, mates! What's the good word?

  • I suggest we cruise missile spam servers and their owners into kingdom come. Someone just convince US congress of the fact that spammers are terrorists (the truth is relative, people) who violate the DMCA in their spare time and then we'll just have to sit back and watch the US military solve the spam problem for us. Ralsky won't be able to spam once all of his servers have become a delightful mix of burned plastic, twisted metal and shattered eletronics, now can he?

  • .......Sounds like a hygiene problem....

  • Some people seem to fret that this legislation is only local.. the only way to make it global is to appeal to the World Trade Organisation. The WTO is responsible for the global application of Copyright Laws and also the DMCA and its European equivalent. Any country that wants to be a member of the WTO must produce legislation that conforms to the WTO's standards... so go lobby the WTO.

  • All Legal Solutions to Tech Problems are Bad (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tmundar ( 587769 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:27AM (#5743007)

    Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring. The problem is that most laws are so broadly written that they usually end up making something legitimate illegal as well.

    Usually these laws end up fining someone who sends 'spam' described in legalese. Then, you forward a joke to someone who gets offended by it, calls it an unsolicited e-mail message, and then uses the law to extract money from your wallet. Meanwhile, since the spammers never send anything using their own return address, they just continue doing what they always have done.

    I think of laws as the social equivalent of bug fixes in code. You fix one problem and unintentionally create 5 new problems.

    Tom

    • > Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring.
      > The problem is that most laws are so broadly written that they usually end up making
      > something legitimate illegal as well.
      > Usually these laws end up fining someone who sends 'spam' described in legalese. Then,
      > you forward a joke to someone who gets offended by it, calls it an unsolicited e-mail message,
      > and then uses the law to extract money from your wallet. Meanwhile, since the spammers never
      > send a

    • Re:All Legal Solutions to Tech Problems are Bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by schon ( 31600 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @09:38AM (#5743709)
      Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring.

      The thing is, spam isn't a techological problem, it's a social one.

      If spam were purely a techological problem, there would be a technological solution. The fact that there are people out there who don't care that they're harrassing millions of innocent people means that there is no technological solution.

    • "All Legal Solutions to Tech Problems are Bad"

      Yes, we should just genetic engineers to creat viruses (like SARS, not Melissa) and spread them to the population. Then we should come up with a technical solution (like an anti-virus) to go kill the virus in the survivors.

      Get off it, man.
    • Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring.

      However, technological solutions to legal problems, such as intentionally causing damages by abusing network services, don't always work either.

      Remember, if it didn't shift their advertising costs to the consumer, spammers wouldn't spam. There'd be no point to doing it.


    • Then, you forward a joke to someone who gets offended by it, calls it an unsolicited e-mail message, and then uses the law to extract money from your wallet. Meanwhile, since the spammers never send anything using their own return address, they just continue doing what they always have done.

      Well, that fact the politicians often pass bad laws doesn't mean that laws are necessarily bad.

      If there was a $10.00 penalty per spam,
      then you might get zapped for 10 bucks.
      A legitimate mailing list might be hit f

  • only outlaws will have sp...

    Uh. Ok.

  • Evil idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sstidman ( 323182 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:46AM (#5743098) Journal
    So if you did want to encourage law makers to pass anti-spam laws, I think it may be fairly easy to make it happen. Borrowing from the recent campaign [slashdot.org] to harass a spammer, what if people started putting the e-mail addresses of various lawmakers on the lists of spammers? I would imagine that if the lawmakers started getting tons of spam, they might be encouraged to do something about it. And I'm not just talking about US lawmakers, I'm talking about lawmakers everywhere. If Chinese or Russian lawmakers are overwhelmed with spam, they might just do something about it.
    • Lawmakers just get aids (or interns or whatever) for free (any polsci major would volunteer to work with a congressman). These kids have to delete the spam and just pass the real email (or summaries) to the representative. Your idea causes hurt an no gain.
    • What makes you think this hasn't already happened?
  • I'm curious, with our politician's email addresses easially available on literally hundreds of web sites, how much spam do they already receive? Does anyone work for a politician and can tell us how much trash they get on a regular basis?
  • Perhaps someone should send a 'group letter' to all relevant politicians in various countries to start co-operating?

    Better yet, find the email address of your favourite MPs and sign them up for all the spam mail sites you cna find... that will get them active pretty quick :-)

  • Australian Considers Outlawing Spam.. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...then only Outlaws will spam?

    As mentioned previously, the myopia of thought in believing that if you "ban" something it will stop is, well, myopic.
  • But as the internet transcends geographical borders, Australian laws would not be sufficient to bring spam under control.

    Even if this law passes, it won't be of that much help. Australians will continue to receive spam originated from all other countries. As for the rest of us, we just won't be receiving any spam from Australian sources. The law is only good if the problem is contained. So spam will continue to linger around for years to come.

    On an interesting note, if this law passes, it may be a

  • Outlawing SPAM is a bad idea (Score:5, Informative)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @09:11AM (#5743530)
    It sounds good on the surface, and everyone likes the idea of spammers spending some quality time in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

    But...it won't work. It's just too easy to move (if its not already moved) these operations offshore to countries where pissed off AOL users aren't a concern. And that's if you can trace the messages and the trail doesn't go cold at some open relay or owned box.

    Furthermore, it only invites a lot of unwanted government regulation of email. If DMCA, the Patriot Act and others aren't enough for you, can you imagine having to license an SMTP server?

    What we need (and I've started to see this gain more prominance in comments to these stories) is better enforcement of fraud and racketeering laws. Most SPAM is criminal, and the best way to find the crooks is to FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL! The one way the crooks behind spam allow themselves to be tracked is through the mechanism that allows them to collect money from their victims.

    If you can eliminate the crooks who are behind most spam, you should see a big reduction in spam. Not everything will go away, but enough should to make a big impact on the people who make a living doing the spamming. If they can't make a buck selling spam services, they might move on to something else.

    If the government won't enforce the criminal laws spammers are already breaking, why should we expect them do a very good job enforcing anti-spam laws, except of course where it benefits Ashcroft et al.
    • But...it won't work. It's just too easy to move (if its not already moved) these operations offshore to countries where pissed off AOL users aren't a concern.

      No, it's not. First of all, the company would have to NOT DO BUSINESS IN THE US! If it does business in the US, then its open to penalties under US law. And second, it's really not that easy to move a business offshore. You'd need to make sure you have no assets left back in the states (or they could be seized), and even then, the banks could pot
  • Which Australian exactly? - I know a guy from Adelaide who doesn't like spam much, maybe it's him.

  • why legislation? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by velo_mike ( 666386 )
    While I agree completely that spam is a pain and costs mail providers money, do we really want laws passed? After all, these are the people who crafted Patriot I & II, DMCA, and COPA/CIPA that most of us are opposed to. What will we give up to in anti-spam legislation?
  • I don't know if anyone has ever had/written about this idea before, but it came to me as I read this article: Someone should begin a huge campaign to get every politician on every spam list imaginable. Most (all?) politicians have public email addresses, and it wouldn't be too hard to sign them up for more spam then they could ever imagine. If they're personal email is available too, it would be even better. When personal convenience is at risk for those who run the United States, change happens very qu
  • when you outlaw spam, only the criminals will get spam...
  • I still think the best way to deal with Spammer is with a flame thrower. Err... Lawsuits, which (we all know) AOL is doing. If they illegalized spam in a bunch of places, spammers could just move shop to africa or some other place like that. A big bunch of ISPs with a bunch of lawyers, now that's a real threat to spam.

    Is this just a bad week for spammers? What happened to hating the spyware?

  • SPAM (Score:2)

    by The_K4 ( 627653 )
    Quick, everyone smap your senators and ask them to make spam illegal!
  • Australian Considers Outlawing Spam


    Who cares if one guy is thinking about outlawing SPAM!?

    I've been thinking about outlawing Spam too, can I have my own /. article now? :-p

    T

  • Should we really be looking... (Score:3, Informative)

    by yoshi_mon ( 172895 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @02:08PM (#5745615)
    ...to Australia for laws about the internet?

    Given [slashdot.org] their track [slashdot.org]-record [slashdot.org] in legislating [slashdot.org] the internet [slashdot.org]. Are we really sure we want to look to them for guidelines on this?
  • Because now the spammers INSIDE the country have to check their entire database of email addresses to make sure none are in their country. So this would (hopefully) eliminate spam FROM Australia....

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