No Federal Do-Not-Spam Registry For Now 324
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "The AP reports today that the U.S. government has no plans to create a do-not-spam registry in the immediate future. Why not? They argue that the proper technology is not yet in place. 'A national do-not-e-mail registry, without a system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam and may even increase the amount of spam received by consumers,' said the commission." The moral of the story is: never try. See the FTC's press release or their report (pdf).
Re:Not yet ready.. (Score:2, Informative)
I Don't Want the Gov't Telling Me What's Spam! (Score:2, Informative)
Among other reasons, it intrudes on the right of people to advertise their political opinions, which is crucial to a democracy.
It's pretty easy to filter out spam. Bayesian filters block nearly all spam, and have the benefit of being tailored to the user's interests, not the spam definitions of the government (which will inevitably hurt those who oppose government policies).
Use Mozilla's mail application: It has excellent spam filtering built right in. If you don't want to use Mozilla, than use Popfile or Spambayes to accomplish the exact same thing: Bayesian Filtering that will nearly eliminate your spam headache.
The math of phone calls (Score:3, Informative)
Spammers, on the other hand, can pay as little as $0 (0 for you foreigners) by using open relays, zombies, etc. So it's in their best interests to hit everybody, even if they're not interested. Rather than miss somebody, they'll hit everybody. A do-not-spam list would only provide a list of verified addresses.
So "never try" is definitely the right response here, at least at the moment, since it will be ignored by the spammers in a way that the do-not-call list avoids. The only question at this point is, who hasn't signed up for the do-not-call list:
* Very lonely people
* Very ignorant people
* People with a higher tolerance for telemarketing than me
Unfortunately, this probably just thrills the telemarketers. They can't call your grandma (since you signed her up) but it means that people who haven't signed up for the list are more likely to be scammable. (No offense to your grandma or anything. I'm sure she's a sweet lady but statistically speaking the elderly are more suceptible to scams, and less likely to take advantage of technological solutions.)
Government uses common sense? Amazing! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not vice versa (Score:3, Informative)
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to make a law that would condemn spamming, period. I bet about 90% of voters don't like to receive spam. Why we have to make the effort to block spammers, when lawmakers should be on our side?
Two words: Big Business.
Re:I Don't Want the Gov't Telling Me What's Spam! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, right now they do have that right. They have the right to do it by speaking (shouting), sending physical mail, or sending electronic mails.
Did you notice that the federal do-not-call phone system excludes certain things that were on your list?
Good idea! So good, it's on page 28 of the report (Score:3, Informative)
Another Slashdot Screw-up (Score:1, Informative)
In this case, the feds had a very good reason for not setting up a No-Spam registry. Spammers would simply use it to get our email addresses. Here's how the AP story actually begins:
That sensible decision hardly deserves the snide remark, "The moral of the story is: never try."The real moral is to read the article before you post.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog [inklingbooks.com], Seattle