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).
There's more than just a lack of proper technology (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a lack of proper legislation. The fundamental property of the Do-Not-Call list is that violators will be prosecuted by the FCC and can be held accountable with serious punishments. Quite frankly the current state of things leaves much to be desired in terms of punishment for spammers.
Fist I want to see some good national anti-spam legislation; then I'll ask for a national Do-Not-Spam list.
A good point (Score:3, Interesting)
How can you say who spammed you? Is it the email referrer who spammed you, the zombie machine that used the referrer or the person from Russia?
And how would they enact vengeance upon said spammer? We have to have a system in place first so that even the slickest lawyer couldn't wiggle through a loophole.
total waste of time (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost all spammers are violating Federal law right now. A do-not-email list would be the most ridiculous thing ever heard of, and would more likely serve as a great source of addresses for spammers.
The problem is there is no enforcement of existing laws in this area. We don't need more laws; we don't need more goofy schemes. We need resources dedicated towards educating and funding law enforcement authorities on how to catch and prosecute spammers.
Crypto to the help (Re:What the...) (Score:1, Interesting)
Why not vice versa (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Not yet ready.. BINGO! (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't really true, however. Research has shown that almost all spam actually comes from America. Much, if not most, of it is routed through either Chinese servers or worm-hijacked PCs, but the origin is still American.
The problem with this whole idea is enforcement. I think a "do not spam" list would be great if there were serious investigation into tracing who sends spam to addresses on this list, and then extremely harsh penalties for sending spam to people on this list (like a public execution). If there's no serious penalty when a spammer misuses this list, then it will only serve to help them by providing them with more email addresses.
And yes, I really do advocate public executions of spammers. Back in the colonial days, public executions were commonplace for serious criminals, and surprise, surprise, they didn't have a serious problem with crime.
Re:Not yet ready.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But wait (Score:2, Interesting)
If it can play any role in keeping them from being implimented -- yes.
KFG
Re:Not yet ready.. BINGO! (Score:3, Interesting)
True. But if the latter were implemented wouldn't a spammer just send a file containing millions of *possible* email addresses? Then the US government would send them a list of the addresses not in their records. Taking the difference between the two lists would provide you with a list of the valid addresses.
Re:Also que... (Score:3, Interesting)
SPF is the answer. Unfortunately, nobody's discovered what the question is to go with that answer
I'll take Spam Solutions [rhyolite.com] for one hundred, please. Question : what FUSSP is an anti-forgery technique that doesn't address the underlying problem, breaks forwarding and is simply defeated anyway by using the null envelope sender? [pobox.com]
Ironically, these and other reasons may be an argument that SPF should be adopted [homepages.tesco.net]
Enforcement mechanism (Score:2, Interesting)
If we shift to email that is nothing but a link back to a content server, and delete anything that doesn't match that, we'll have a means of tracking back to a responsible party and enforcing Don't-Spam.
International spam can be filtered out by blocking email linked to servers in countries that don't enforce Don't-Spam. Also block any email that links using a straight IP address (or simply don't support that in the email linking protocol).
If an email content server can turn over the spammer who violated Don't-Spam, the spammer gets fined. If someone lets their server get hijacked for spam (or claims that is what happened), they deserve a fine.
On a Related Note (Score:2, Interesting)
Slow but Steady (Score:3, Interesting)
Ensconsed in Commissioner Swindell's colorful words is a hint of the real problem: The problem is a social one, not a technological one.
The means of execution (no pun intended, but I'll take it) may be technological, but not the cause. Trying to solve it technologically will be equivalent to allopathic medicine where the symptoms are treated instead of the cause. Sure, you can kill the tumor, but if you don't remove the cause of the cancer, the problem remains.
Stop treating spam as though it came forth by breaking the vaccuum symmetry and existed suddenly where nothing had before. It's a new face on an old problem and could easily be treated as such, if it weren't for the mentality that still thinks that anything printed in dot matrix on green and white line tractor feed paper is more real and authoritive than handwriting.
The TCPA works for junk faxes. Rewrite it so as not to be strictly telecom.
When people hijack machines as spam drones, catch their ass and prosecute them under computer crimes laws.
There are STILL cops who refuse to handle stalking cases where email is involved because they're allowed to claim their ignorance prevents them from acting, when the fact is the stalking laws say nothing like "unless it's in email".
Stop treating it as if it's all new and different. It's all just new ways of doing the same old things, and the old ways of stopping it would still work.
So easy. (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Subpoena the bank that cached the check or processed the credit card.
3) Arrest the spammer and jail them.
4)
5) End of spam