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Spam United States Your Rights Online

Spammers Pleased with 'Anti'-Spam Act 468

Posted by michael from the you've-got-spam dept.
grung0r writes "A post at Ed Foster's Gripelog explains why the new anti-spam law that Congress is passing isn't a good idea: 'it's clear that only the Direct Marketing Association, Microsoft, AOL and a handful of others had any input into the law, because it's carefully crafted to allow the big marketers free reign. And the loopholes it provides them will be more than big enough to provide aid and comfort for the smallest and sleaziest of spammers as well.' More about the problems with the law can be found at cauce.org." The direct marketers are dancing in the streets over it.
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Spammers Pleased with 'Anti'-Spam Act More

Spammers Pleased with 'Anti'-Spam Act

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  • Yay government. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shystershep ( 643874 ) * <bdshepherd@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:28PM (#7562231) Homepage Journal
    The lack of the private remedy is bad (there's nothing more intimidating than looking down the barrel of a loaded lawyer), but at least the law requires the spam to be labeled. That will make it a lot easier to filter out - - provided, of course, that those anonymous sellers of penis lengtheners obey the law. If you can't trust someone like that to be a law-abiding citizen, who can you trust?

    • Re:Yay government. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by satyap ( 670137 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:30PM (#7562252)
      No, fuck no. I don't want want to filter the spam after it has already gotten into my system and is chewing its way through my procmailrc! I want it to stop outside my network.

      • Re:Yay government. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sketerpot ( 454020 ) <sketerpotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:39PM (#7562356)
        If spam is labeled, it'll be easy for ISPs to kill it, and advantageous to to so as quickly as possible---they don't like spam wasting bandwidth any more than you do.

        • Labelled how? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:59PM (#7562590)
          As the post states, the bill does not give any specific manner for how a piece of spam should identify itself as such.

          From the text of the bill [spamlaws.com], the mail must provide
          clear and conspicuous identification that the message is an advertisement or solicitation

          But what does that mean? Putting "[AD]" in the subject title? Adding a "is-spam: true" header? Ending the message with "BTW, this is spam"? Some of them? All of them? Any could be could be considered a valid indentification but the vast variety of methods and phrasings could make it very difficult to actually filter out based on these "clear" identifications.

          • If it's anything like the spam I get... (Score:5, Funny)

            by IANAAC ( 692242 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:20PM (#7562843)
            About, oh, 80-100 characters to the right of the Subject line is a very clear label - "afdgkbj gfda hnrabs sf bgfb sfgfda nhmflwje" :-)

          • Re:Labelled how? (Score:5, Informative)

            by Eric Savage ( 28245 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:40PM (#7563610) Homepage
            Actually, it kind of does do this in a kind of weak manner in Section 11:

            "The Commission shall transmit to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce--a report, within 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act, that sets forth a plan for requiring commercial electronic mail to be identifiable from its subject line, by means of compliance with Internet Engineering Task Force Standards, the use of the characters `ADV' in the subject line, or other comparable identifier, or an explanation of any concerns the Commission has that cause the Commission to recommend against the plan."

            That's pretty loose language, including the ability to say it shouldn't be done, but I doubt IETF is going to side with marketers here.

          • Clear, conspicuous and amorphous (Score:4, Informative)

            by 87C751 ( 205250 ) <sdot AT rant-central DOT com> on Wednesday November 26, 2003 @02:49AM (#7566473) Homepage
            Not only does the bill not define what "clear and conspicuous identification", it forbids the FTC from clarifying that part of the law, vis:
            SEC. 13. REGULATIONS.

            (a) IN GENERAL- The Commission may issue regulations to implement the provisions of this Act (not including the amendments made by sections 4 and 12). Any such regulations shall be issued in accordance with section 553 of title 5, United States Code.

            (b) LIMITATION- Subsection (a) may not be construed to authorize the Commission to establish a requirement pursuant to section 5(a)(5)(A) to include any specific words, characters, marks, or labels in a commercial electronic mail message, or to include the identification required by section 5(a)(5)(A) in any particular part of such a mail message (such as the subject line or body).
            The can't say what qualifies as identification. They can't even say where the identifying portion must appear.

            This is such complete bullshit!

      • Re:Yay government. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Brad Mace ( 624801 )
        At least it's progress. If the labelling requirement can be enforced, it might give us more meaningful statistics on how spam is clogging the internet. Either way, spam can't go unrestricted forever. The bandwidth consumed by spam is vastly outpacing the bandwidth available. Eventually even our government will understand that spam has to be limited in order for the internet to function.

        When spam reaches the point that other, more profitable ecommerce activities can't function, we'll see some real rest

    • no, it's meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:35PM (#7562323)
      I hate spammers, but this law is meaningless, as are ALL anti-spam laws:

      1. Spammers will ignore the law. Which leads to the next point:

      2. Laws are meaningless unless enforced. How will it be enforced? When I get hit with spam that violates this law, who do I complain to? Who will investigate my complaint and then pursue and punish the spammers?

      3. Where will all the money and resources come from to enforce this law (see point #2 above) -- to actually enforce this law will take FAR more money and resources than anyone realizes or will admit.

      And even if significant money and resources are allocated to enforce the law:

      4. What about all the spam originating from servers outside the U.S.

      • Re:no, it's meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thentil ( 678858 ) <thentil@yahoo.cOOOom minus threevowels> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:22PM (#7562862)
        How will it be enforced? When I get hit with spam that violates this law, who do I complain to? Who will investigate my complaint and then pursue and punish the spammers?

        I shouldn't *have* to complain to someone, or rely on someone else to protect me - if I'm spammed, I want the ability to file a lawsuit - which this legislation prevents. The SEC is supposed to protect me from fraud, too - but they haven't been doing too good a job recently. If you call the FBI about fraud, they won't do anything unless your losses are above xyz amount. The point is, the government should be enabling the individual to protect himself, not forcing the individual to rely on an underfunded, overworked, special-interest-and-politically-compromised body.

    • RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:52PM (#7562507)
      Did you even bother to read the article? Yes, it has to be labeled as spam, but the label isn't defined. As a matter of fact, the label is up to the spammer to decide! The FTC is PROHIBITED by this law from defining the label. So how are you supposed to filter out mail based on an arbitrary label defined by the sender?

      • Re:RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sketerpot ( 454020 ) <sketerpotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:04PM (#7562645)
        Wow, I retract my comment about this making spam from the US trivial to filter out. This looks like just a voter-appeasement act that leaves the spammers with as much leeway as they want.

        Congressional scum meet spamming scum. Who is worse?

    • Re:Yay government. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BrynM ( 217883 ) *

      "but at least the law requires the spam to be labeled"

      But not with any specific label and the law forbids the FTC from setting a standard label. Thus, one message might be marked "ADV", and the next one marked "SOL" (solicitation), and the next marked "FOO", and the next marked "Sparky the Sample Bot", and on and on... This will make it pretty much useless to filter as it would raise the false positive rate by adding too many triggering words and phrases (ie: AOL labeling with "Hi ____, here's your update

    • And we made sure there's no useful legal remedy against you!

      As an added bonus, we're going to require, at no extra charge, already included in your kind and generous campaign donations, a special feature whereby your victims have to go to your very own webpage to hunt for some "opt-out" mechanism - wink wink!

      Just think of all the pop up ads you can sell!

      Spamming has never been so profitable and thanks to your very own congresspeople, such as Billy Tauzin, every legitimate business trying to pump up next

  • I agree, it's not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)

    by r_glen ( 679664 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:28PM (#7562234)
    With the new bill, we have to rely on and trust the 'opt-out' option, something we've been trained NOT to do.
    • You STILL can't trust the opt-out option -- what happens if the spam is from outside the US? In this case, you're just as screwed!

      Best way is still just to grab the headers and complain to the account from which the e-mail came.

      • "...what happens if the spam is from outside the US? In this case, you're just as screwed!"

        OTOH, it might be good if all spammers to want to pretend they're from the US... maybe they'll finally learn some god damn English!

    • Re:I agree, it's not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)

      by frankie ( 91710 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:02PM (#7562632) Journal
      rely on and trust the 'opt-out' option

      Oh but it's worse than that. The opt-out provision only applies to the specific company being advertised. Start a new shell company (maybe $50 in some states, less in the carribean) and you can spam everyone all over again, 100% legally. Plus you've got all those freshly confirmed addresses!

      In fact, I don't think the law prohibits selling your opt-out list to other spammers, for use as their new spam list. Isn't life grand?

      Further problems with the law:
      • no private right of action. 99.98% of spammers don't cause $5000+ worth of damage and therefore will never be prosecuted by the FBI or FTC. Individuals, companies, and probably even state governments will have to take it up the ass.
      • Meanwhile, the big names on ROKSO [spamhaus.org] will know how to abuse the loopholes [spamhaus.org] free and clear.
      • Nulls out all existing state spam laws [geocities.com], most of which are stronger than this crap.
      But all the Congress-critters get to go home to their districts and say "I voted to protect you from spam!" without even realizing that they're lying (except that as usual their lips are moving).

      • It's even worse than you think (Score:5, Informative)

        by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @09:41PM (#7564675) Homepage
        The opt-out provision only applies to the specific company being advertised.

        No. It's even narrower than that. It only applies to the specific line of business of the specific company being advertised. So one spammer can send you a Viagra spam, a mortgage-refinancing spam, an inkjet cartridge spam, a long distance spam, a cigarettes-by-mail spam, an extend-your-warranty spam, an online greeting card spam, a dating service spam, a credit card spam, a debt-consolidation spam, and a wireless video camera spam. You then have to opt out of each one separately.

  • Yes (Score:2, Interesting)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) *
    Those who can do: Do.
    Those that can't do: Spam.

  • they bought 12 van halen cds for the price of 1

  • Pro-business (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JohnGrahamCumming ( 684871 ) *
    Seems to me that the act is pretty pro-business all around. It's pro-business in the spammer sense since it lets marketers send unsolicited mail and it's pro-business in the anti-spammer sense since the existence of spam will keep anti-spammers in business!

    What more would you expect from a capitalist country?

    John.

  • Did anyone fool themselves.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by clifgriffin ( 676199 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:32PM (#7562273) Homepage
    ...into thinking this would stop spam anyway?

    Nothing can stop spam outside of God.

    Blogzine.net [blogzine.net]

  • It's a total scam. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:32PM (#7562281) Homepage Journal

    ..just like the anti-virus industry. The laws have glaring loopholes through them but were worded well enough to calm down the masses. Now the anti-spam software industry will grow like mad as spam continues to flood inboxes. It's no coincidence that Microsoft was consulted on the spam laws, they have a vested interest in the after market antispam business.
    • I may just be "the masses" but this looks like a huge win:
      • It bans forged headers (which is huge for me, as I get bombed by hundreds of returns every day from some moron forging my domain, plus retaliations from the idiots who know enough to be a nuisance but don't know that headers can be forged).
      • It bans address harvesting, meaning a potential end to obfuscating addresses, a huge PITA.
      • It provides a national opt-out list!
      • It requires a real opt-out mechanism, instead of the situation today where we're af
    • Just out of curiousity, what would Microsofts vested interest be, in the anti-spam business?

  • Loopholes, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Loki_1929 ( 550940 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:32PM (#7562284) Journal
    Guess we're stuck with Plan B [bizjournals.com].

    (Just Kidding)

    • Why not just get a machine hooked up on a network that will allow it and have it do nothing but send properly labeled emails to the retards who wrote this, on the order of thousands a day. If we can just squat and flood their inboxes, and their servers, within the bounds of the law, we can show them that the law sucks. And then we'll probably be sent off to Cuba as terrorists for depriving Congressmen access to their IT infrastructure.

  • Spammers need to be SHOT (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:33PM (#7562294)
    ...end of story. The filthy assholes have NO sense of responsibility. They don't care that they're pissing people off every day or that spam traffic is choking the internet. Kill 'em all, and make 'em suffer.
    • And apparently, you see no sense of responsibility, either. Nor do you seem to care about pissing people off. Violence won't solve spam- it's a problem that is rooted deeper in the culture than "there are evil people: kill them." For instance, the problem could have been kicked a decade ago if more people took the problem seriously and didn't say that it was only an annoyance. Furthermore, if mega-ISPs like AOL and MSN actually tried to block spam, or if gov't-owned ISPs such as KoreaNet were less sesceptib
    • I find it unfortunate that it took an AC to say the obvious.

      The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and nobody needs spam except the amateur P.T. Barnum's of the world who know that some fool somewhere is going to think the email they just recieived is anything more than a "ping" with a bandwidth "hoover" attached to it.

      The law is of no use to anyone here except the politicians, who see another way to take taxpayer dollars and a possible vector to ratcheting more control over what people do or

  • The law was not about stopping spam (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:34PM (#7562312)
    Our government will shortly be saying that they can not regulate Spam unless they can watch all things moving across the wire. This includes the Net and Voice. The US government is slowly setting up the reason for why they have to monitor everything in our lives.
  • "This bill is not going to single-handedly eliminate all the spam in the universe overnight all by itself, therefore it's a waste of time and not worth the bother and typical of big government trying to control things and yadda yadda yadda...."
  • I wonder if AOL would pay more attention to this if they had to record someone saying "you've got spam!" to be played six times for everytime the "you've got mail!" sound plays. Perhaps then they'd actually try to do something about it.
    • I briefly used an AOL dial-up account before I got DSL. I never told a single soul about my AOL email address and never used it. After a few months I thought I'd check my AOL email for the first time just for the hell of it. There were about 500 messages in there, all of it spam.

  • A Bill Name that Makes Sense (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chickenwing ( 28429 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:37PM (#7562335) Homepage
    I thought polititions were smart about naming bills (USA Patriot) so that they could dupe the electorate into thinking anyone who didn't vote for it was the spawn of Satan.

    I don't know how signing a bill called "CAN Spam" is going to help anyone get re-elected.

  • Welcome to reality, Mr. Morrissey (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:39PM (#7562353) Homepage Journal
    So Brian Morrissey, the Senior Editor of the DMNews, thinks spam isn't all that bad. That consumers shouldn't be able to sue to take back their inboxes.

    I guess we can't say he's not putting his money where his mouth is, though... he put his email in a clickable link right there on the DMNews.com site.

    Of course, some spammers may exclude dmnews.com from their spidering. That does Mr. Morrissey a huge disservice! Clearly, unsolicited email is something he strongly supports, and we should help him in any way we can.

    So if anyone would like to include bmorrissey@dmnews.com on their email list, I'm sure Brian Morrissey [mailto] would not mind at all! After all, Mr. Brian Morrissey [mailto] (whose email address is bmorrissey@dmnews.com) is Senior Editor [mailto] of "The Online Newspaper of Record for Direct Marketers." He probably knows the Webmaster [mailto] and the Postmaster [mailto], too, and I'm sure they would never consider UCE to be Abuse [mailto].

    This has been a public service of the Slashdot community. Don't worry, you can thank us [mailto] later!

  • Opt- out works for regular mail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:40PM (#7562363) Homepage
    The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) web page has an opt out of junk mail page hidden in there somewhere, where for 5$ via internet or free via mail you can opt out of junk mail. I did it and it works remarkable well. It takes time to start up , but all members of the DMA are required to not send to addresses on the opt out list.

    I was pleasantly surprised.

    Of course one has to wonder how many spams are from legit businesses that are members of DMA?

    • "Hey Guido, I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse. Gimme five bucks, or my friends here with their big fucking baseball bats are going to practise on your kneecaps, tough guy. And no, wiseguy, you can't get a receipt. By the way, same time next week?"
    • While it may be a lagitimate creative business in the United States of America, in most parts of the world, that is called extortion.

  • So let me get this right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jlechem ( 613317 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:40PM (#7562365) Homepage Journal
    It's not going to stop SPAM just make it honest. They have to provide a real address, label it as commercial, and provide an opt-out that really works. How does this keep me from getting SPAM? I don't give a rats ass about opt outs or addresses I don't want this crap in my in-box to begin with. I'm not even going to mention the bastards overseas who are under no obligation to follow these rules( like they would if they had to anyway).

  • DMNews is Amusing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zeasier ( 708695 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:42PM (#7562389)
    The site has rather conservative advertisements. For example no pop-ups or animated adds in the middle of a text body. What would the site look like if it had the same advertising to content ratio direct marketeers create in their mediums?

  • Only improvements to SMTP will fix spam (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KeithH ( 15061 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:43PM (#7562397)
    The US government still hasn't clued in to the fact that The Internet is a global resource. As such, local entities such as governments are going to have very little power to control it.

    The proper solution is to get off our butts and start migrating away from SMTP.
    • Unfortunately, all the improvements to SMTP that I've heard proposed would still be rendered moot by the insecurity of Windows.

      Strong authentication to a mail server that knows you personally? Unforgeable headers? Hash cash? Great ideas, but not ones that will have any effect on millions of compromised Windows systems each sending a small number of messages properly through their own mail servers.

      Do you have some improvements in mind which would obviate the zombie-army problem? I'd love to hear them.
  • With this new bill marketers must offer an unsubscribe link and respect it. However these is no guarentee your address might reappear by methods they'll claim were opt-in. Additionally we have all been trained that by clicking unsubscribe guarentees you MORE spam and not less. While *some* spammers might follow the rules and properly label their spam and offer reliable unsubscribe options, the shady spammers are guarenteed to gain. Their already operating illegally under a shroud of secrecy so being ca

  • AOL/MSFT (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lunartik ( 94926 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:44PM (#7562409) Homepage Journal
    it's clear that only the Direct Marketing Association, Microsoft, AOL and a handful of others had any input into the law, because it's carefully crafted to allow the big marketers free reign. And the loopholes it provides them will be more than big enough to provide aid and comfort for the smallest and sleaziest of spammers as well.'

    AOL and MSFT probably deal with more spam headaches than anyone else. I don't really notice them using spam, just trying to filter it in vain from their services.

  • spam revenue structure (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slavitos ( 666569 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:44PM (#7562412) Homepage
    I don't rememeber the source (I think it was UK research), but I read a report somewhere that said that the biggest "source" of income for spammers is not even the money they receive from 0.001% who do respond to their messages, but what they make when they re-sell the list (less bouncebacks, of course).

    It looks like some bizarre vicious circle: the spammer doesn't even care if you are going to respond to the "opt-out" clause in their mailings simply because by the time the opt-out reaches them, they wil already have sold your address to 5 other spammers and made their money on you.

    Am I wrong or the bill simply doesn't address the list reselling practice? (Granted, I haven't read the actual legislation - just the press coverage).

    • From the bill:

      4.a. In general - If a recipient makes a request using a mechanism provided pursuant to paragraph (3) not to receive some or any commercial electronic mail message from such sender, then it is unlawful -
      (i)...(ii)...(iii)...(iv) for the sender, or any other person who knows that the recipient has made such a request, to sell, lease, exchange, or otherwise transfer or release the electronic mail address of the recipient...for any purpose other than compliance with this act.

      [Damn PDF for not a

  • We should ban all forms of marketing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you think about it, marketing as a whole is idiotic. Marketing doesn't produce anything. It's just about steering the masses toward one product at the expense of a competitor, whose product could actually be better.

    How about a world where you simply submit your new product to a system of independent reviews, which then informs consumers of their options? I think it would be much better than the system we have now, where effective marketing tends to border illegality.

    Marketing isn't needed. Marketing is

  • If they spam you... (Score:4, Funny)

    by pr0ntab ( 632466 ) <pr0ntab.gmail@com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:47PM (#7562445) Journal
    then they are entering a business transcation with you.

    At that point, feel free to inquire over, and over, and over again about all of their services, and not purchase anything. And their upstream marketing service providers. Chat up their 1-8xx call center staff. Try to see if they're free on Friday.

    You will strangely find the front pages to all their websites VERY interesting, worthy of 200 views per hour. Especially all the images in the /images directory.

    It's pro business, after all. Pro-ISP and Pro-Telcom... hehehe.

  • Pro-spam (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rank Amateur ( 38275 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:47PM (#7562447)
    There. You have it. The anti-spam bill is a pro-spam bill.
    I still wonder how the government will justify the fact that spammers use, without paying a red cent, the facilities of others to do their dirty deeds.
    This is in direct contrast to other direct marketers. Junk mail? Every letter requires a 37 cent postage stamp. Junk faxes and phone calls? These require payment by the sender of flat phone rates and calling charges.
    Spam, however, is virtually free for the sender, piggybacking on other people's equipment. It's the first form of direct marketing *in history* in which the unhappy recipient pays (through increased ISP costs) for the priviledge of receiving messages.
    The US government, in effect, has declared that all online citizens will be forced endure, and to pay for, receipt of unsolicited spam -- and, what's more, have no recourse, as private individuals, in the courts. A sad day overall.
  • OK, so this law is passed and everyone gets one free shot at spamming people. Will this little fed stamp-of-approval stop ISPs and businesses from filtering out this spam? Will spammers be able to litigate using the ole restraint of trade argument, if this is signed into law and makes spam legal?

  • Contradiction in Terms? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by syphax ( 189065 )
    From the article:
    legitimate e-mail marketers
  • this is a bullshit law, but fortunately it will impact my users and myself on a minimal level. Why? I heavily firewall off spamming isps at my mail server plus i do several rbl checks after the firewall. Any spammer stupid enough to even try spamming me gets an immiedate block. So bring it on Dma, i still got PLENTY of space in iptables for you.
  • Plutocracy: a government by and for the wealthy, i.e. spammers have the money to buy lobbyists, who in turn buy politicians, who then pass convenient laws for the spammers. It's all so tidy and efficient.

    I'm as cynical and jaded as the next genX geek, but it still pisses me off that no one gives a shite about the common good. You get the sense that those in power would laugh out loud if you even mentioned it. Bastards.

    Oh by the way, even good legislation would be useless against spam. How is these people

  • Typical Liberal Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:52PM (#7562503)
    Alright, I always thought Schumer was stupid weak minded liberal who thinks government can solve all of life's woes, but this proves it:
    "It's not going to solve all the problems, but it's the first real step," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The public is demanding something. It's going to happen. We're going to get it done."
    Okay, spam is not a government problem, it is a technical problem and no amount of praying or laws (Smart or dumb) are going to solve the problems of spam. Now here is the list why:
    1) Most spam that ends up in U.S. mailboxes comes from overseas, so no US law is going to stop that.
    2) Spam actually works on an economic level, if it did not, then no one would spam. Spammers spam, because spam works. Destroy the profitiblity of spamming and spam will go away.
    3) Spamming is easy. Make it so addresses can not be spoofed, email headers can't be forged and MX records have to match up with A records (All those modem pool modems would not be able to send because no will accept mail from a machine that does not have an correct MX record). I think if you fixed this, then a lot of the spam would just go away.

  • Spammers make a choice to hijack systems to cover their tracks, leech bandwidth to make others pay their costs, increase the burden on mail servers everywhere, and flood the Internet with needless traffic.

    How is a new law going to suddenly convince them they're doing something wrong, morally or legally?
  • The law we actually need to deal with spam is a an allocation of $10million to the FBI to investigate and prosecute violations of existing laws where such violations include the use of bulk email. Then the FBI would have the resources to track down some of the spammers who are using hacked systems to send spam.

    Only once the Department of Justice has done everything they can to enforce the current laws should new laws be passed.

  • Anti-spam registry and opt-out... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:55PM (#7562536)
    A registry and opt-out links are of no help to me when the message also contains no information identifying which of my e-mail addresses they addressed their spam. Mail to any username at my domain goes to me. With Bcc'd spam, I can't identify the address they used to tell them to stop.

  • On naievity... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mrex ( 25183 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:55PM (#7562542)
    If anyone here thinks for a minute that this abominable piece of legislation is an "accident" caused by those writing it being non-technical, wake the hell up.

    Every single word of this bill was intentionally crafted to do what it does -- make Congress look anti-spam to everyone except spammers. This is a Congressional "wink and nod" to all the scum out there who are more than happy to cost you money to try to sell you something.

    Remember, kids, messing with other peoples' computers "for fun" is bad and wrong and the FBI will hunt you down. If you're going to make money at it, and of course you allocate some of that money to bribing^Wlobbying Congress, thats a whole different story. Sigh.
  • I know that we've been debating spam the effectiveness of Spam legislation here on slashdot for the last couple days. YES, it might momentarily stem the flow of spam, but really laws like this allow too much leeway! If you think this will stop spam you have another thing coming!

    Technology on the other hand is the way to go. I recently got feed up with my hotmail account due to spam and I switched to another free site called Shadango.com. It allows me to check both my students address and hotmail thr
  • Obviously there's money in spam, but other companies are making far more money conducting legitimate business over the internet. Spam isn't nearly profitable enough for these companies to turn away while such an important means of doing business is destroyed.

    I have to believe that Microsoft understands what spam is doing to the internet, and they must want it to continue working. They are the ones running hotmail after all. No one can buy them off, and any money they might make off spam wouldn't even b

  • Obviously this won't get rid of any spam, but it will do two useful things:

    1. For "legitimate" spammers, it will be easy to filter them out, preferably at the server level. (I wonder if we could convince, say, AOL to bounce all email self-designated as spam.)

    2. For illegitimate spammers, we will now have some sort of legal recourse. I know that this won't be easy, since illegitimate spammers don't include valid return addresses, but it's a start. We can also use it to punish legitimate companies who use
  • What did you expect from politicians? Did you really expect an effective law? If it doesn't line pockets or permit illegal activity, it's not worth their time of day.

  • The point (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kelz ( 611260 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:58PM (#7562578)
    is that the govvies are at least TRYING (however uselessly) to solve some of the spam problem. I would've given each spammer 40 lashes, but seeing as special interest groups (including spammers) dominate government nowadays, I'll take what I can get.

    • The REAL point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JetScootr ( 319545 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:04PM (#7562644) Journal
      Is that it doesn't do anything. The govvies weren't trying to help "we the people". They wrote and enacted a law that shelters spammers from "we the people".
      How can you tell if a law is unjust? If it makes **ANY** provision at all preventing people from suing those who break the law.
      We have been denied access to the third branch of government in order to protect the business interests of spammers.

  • We must act NOW! (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:01PM (#7562623) Homepage
    We must take action before this crap bill is passed!


    Take a few hours of spam, and fax it to your congress person and senators. Include a letter that explains how the bill is such a bad idea and it will increase the spam. I sent 25 pages to my people with a letter that explained that this was 6 hours of spam on a Sunday. That the bill, if passed will make this much worse. That only opt-in will work and that there must be statutory damages and a private right of action.


    Of course, they are welcome to opt out of this campain, from each of us who add them to the list. They may get the point if 500 people do the same thing every few days, and they have to opt out from all 500.

  • It seems to me that legislative and technical measures against Nigerian toner enlagement offers have only had limited success. For some time, it has occurred to me that an attack on the spammers business model might be a more effective strategy. It only takes a very few idiots who respond to spam to keep the bad guys in business. I suspect there will always be idiots, so this is not likely to be an effective way of attacking spamers. However, they may still be vulnerable on the cost side. For instance, if e

  • Forget the politicians (Score:4, Informative)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:04PM (#7562648)
    Politicians are useless. Law enforcement bodies don't even have cyber-crime issues anywhere on their priority list, much less the resources to fight it.

    I encourage the population to engage in a number of active efforts to negate the value all these advertisers have, and their tendency now to bombard us all into oblivion with their repetitive, misleading and obnoxious messages.

    * When you get spam, report it to Spamcop [spamcop.net]. Don't even bother with cutting-and-pasting the html source, the web hosting companies of spammers don't care about complaints. Make sure the complaints go to the ISPs who manage the IP space the spammer is operating from. But more importantly, when you report spam to spamcop, the source gets immediately flagged as a spammer and thousands of systems around the world refuse to accept mail from the source. It's VERY effective and the sooner you report spam, the more effective it is. The crap messages don't even get to peoples' mail servers this way. It WORKS!

    * Turn off your TV and refuse to let yourself be turned into a quivering ADHD blob with the constant barrage of commercial suggestions. If you must watch TV, do yourself a favor and get a TiVo [tivo.com] (it will be the best money you ever spent) and record what you want, when you want, take back your life and best of all skip the commercials!

    * If you're feeling the need to waste time complaining, send a letter to your congressman and senators telling them that if they don't put more resources into cyber-crime enforcement you'll make it the center of your life to ensure they can't get elected to anything ever again.

    * Spread the word that the only realistic solution to spam is licensing outbound mail relays via a sanctioned body that is nowhere near as incompetent as ICANN. We need an opt-in, international SMTP mail relay whitelist with ethical rules for being included.

    * If you've had any bad experiences with companies who've ripped you off, do us all a favor and put up a web page on it and list it with the search engines. Peoples' apathy towards getting railroaded encourges the continuation of these scams. Know someone who's been burned by home-mortgage scams? Publish it! Put it out there forever. Every little bit helps to educate the feebleminded populace,make them more skeptical of suggestions (as well as editorial packaged as "news") and negate the value of quantum advertising.

    * Forget client-side e-mail filtering as a spam solution. It will never work and it is a black hole of resources, time and money. Filtering is good for viruses and idiots who still insist on clicking attachments, but it won't ever do much for the spam problem.

    * Encourage your ISP to employ relay blacklisting [dmoz.org] to thwart spammers so they can't even connect to remote systems.

    * If you still find yourself occasionally watching tv and are annoyed at misleading ad campaigns, do what I do: dial the 1-800 number repeatedly over the course of the commercial's airing, making the advertiser's efforts counterproductive and sending a message that you're tired of being bombarded, emotionally manipulated and lied to.

    * Don't buy any products advertised in any manner in which you find offensive or annoying regardless of the quality/desireability of the product.

    * If you still feel your penis isn't big enough, just go to the local store and buy some multi-vitamins or just deal with it. You don't need a bigger penis, newer car, a George Forman grill, closet organizer, no-money-down real estate, second mortgage, questionable mexican placebos packaged as drugs, or to see Holly hump a German Shephard. Pick up the phone and go hang out with friends who like you for who you are and don't buy into the media's constant message that you're inadequate and money will solve this.
  • According to my Popfile email filter 87.26% of all the email I get is spam.

    I am very thankful for popfile.

    Is there any possible form of active counter measures that can be incorporated into spam filters? I like the idea of having a spam filter down load and ignore the contents of every URL listed in every spam I recieve. *BUT* that would allow someone to ddos anyone by just sending an obvious spam with a bogus URL in it to a few million of us.

    Stonewolf

  • Why don't companies understand... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ShortedOut ( 456658 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:11PM (#7562734) Journal
    I don't want you to call me to sell me something, I'll call you.

    I don't want you to mail me with advertisements, I'll mail you.

    I don't want you to knock on my door to talk to me, I'll knock on your door to talk to you.

    I don't want you to send me an e-mail, If I want your product, I'll send YOU an e-mail.

    I don't want to drive down the street and look at your signs, I want to see the trees.

    I, like many other intelligent people, like to buy things that we need, or want based on research, or discussion with friends and their experiences with the product or service.

    So, in conclusion, remember two things,
    1. Forcing your product on me is a good way to NOT sell it to me.
    and
    2. Don't call me, I'll call you.

  • Changes Made to the Bill by the Senate on Tuesday (Score:3, Informative)

    by langles ( 192276 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:33PM (#7562997) Homepage
    If you pay attention to some of the news stories today about the Senate vote, you will notice that the Senate has revised the bill slightly.

    Some of the changes are listed in a news release [senate.gov] from Sentator Burns' website:

    The final CAN SPAM Act includes changes not in the earlier Senate passed version, including increased damages up to $250 per spam e-mail with a cap of $2 million that can be tripled for aggravated violations. For e-mails using false or deceptive headers, the cap does not apply. Additionally, the revisions to the earlier bill enhance FTC enforcement authority.

    This means that the House gets to vote again on the revised bill - probably after Thanksgiving

  • And the name of the Act: (Score:3, Funny)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:41PM (#7563081) Journal
    I can't see anyone has mentioned the hilarious and honest name of this new act: CAN-SPAM ("Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act").

  • This is just the groundwork (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikey504 ( 464225 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @06:51PM (#7563175)
    Once the law is in place and spammers are allowed to let fly with impunity without fear of prosecution (because, as one person pointed out, it's free for them to use the resources of others in order to do so), then someone will get the bright idea of making it cost money to send spam.

    And viola`-- they will have conned us into begging them to "tax the internet", which is something they have been trying to figure out ever since it showed up on their radar screen. Sure it's neat, but how can we TAX it?

  • Like a tolling bell (Score:3, Funny)

    by isomeme ( 177414 ) <cdberry@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:08PM (#7563342) Journal
    If, as is expected, the Senate gives final approval and President Bush signs it into law, we may well be witnessing the end of Internet e-mail.
    Wow, a prediction of the imminent collapse of (part of) the Net? Isn't that supposed to happen on Thursdays, not Tuesdays?

    Seriously speaking, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why anyone is bothered by spam. My ISP runs SpamAssassin, which spam-scores every inbound message and munges the headers with that score. My procmail sorts anything over a particular score into a spam folder, which I periodically empty, usually with a cursory glance to see if there are any false positives (I haven't seen one for four months, by the way). Anywhere from zero to five spams reach my inbox every day, which I delete; if the number starts to creep higher, I might lower my filter threshold. And that's it. Total labor input from me is about fifteen minutes a week. I spend more time than that rinsing out the office coffee pot. So why all this outrage and law-making and angst?

  • Interesting idea to get the message to politicians (Score:3, Informative)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:21PM (#7563471)
    I think we're preaching to the choir complaining about the effectiveness of the bill here, but it might not be a bad idea to address what someone else mentioned, of using technology, but NOT to deal with the spam problem. In truth, this isn't a spam problem, this is a law-enforcement, political priority problem.

    Maybe this has been done before, but if not, it seems like a great idea:

    How about if we get everyone within their local calling region with the resources to hang a modem on their PC and map an e-mail address that goes directly to the fax machine of their local senators, representatives and district attorneys?

    While letting spammers hit these e-mails and bombard politicians' fax machines seems appealing, it might be even more effective to make it very easy for people within their regions to send an e-mail that goes to a politicians' fax machine. (We know most of them don't read e-mail)

    I'd be willing to do this in my region. What if we got enough people to do this so we had a nationwide network of e-mail/fax gateways? It seems it would be much more effective to bombard a politician's fax machine with frustrated cries from their constitutients than home-mortgage scams.

  • The Opposite of the ADV Subject (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eric Savage ( 28245 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:24PM (#7563491) Homepage
    While the law doesn't specify a way to mark a message as spam, it does say:

    "(2) PROHIBITION OF DECEPTIVE SUBJECT HEADINGS- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission to a protected computer of a commercial electronic mail message if such person has actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that a subject heading of the message would be likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message (consistent with the criteria are used in enforcement of section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 45))."

    So if you were to write a negative test on "this is not an ad" in the subject line, any spam getting through would be breaking the law.

    Not realistic, just an illustration that this bill isn't COMPLETELY useless. At least it makes forging headers explicitly illegal, that alone is a big step.

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