Die spam, die!

[Yupa]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/11/24/...mvote%20_1.html

 

oh -*BAD WORD*- yes!

[Jimster]

gd gd .. but i dont think they can police it fully, fase it... we will never get rid of it , every day we will have 2 empty our inboxes of crap

[Yupa]

sure, but eventually (!@#$%^&*uming the world doesn't end before then) all countries should be civilized enough to do the same

[madhaha]

Seeing as the US causes 90% of the world's spam, I don't think you should be looking at the rest of the world.

 

Also consider the implications of the bill to buisness and the loopholes as well as the lengths spammers have already gone to avoid detection. Litigation is unlikely to stop spam.

 

Besides, I don't think the bill will be passed. 97-0 vote and then get past Bush? Dream on.

[Aileron]

!@#$%^&*uming this bill will behave like the related telemarketing "do not call" list, it should have no problem getting past congress and the president. The real problem is that most likely the Supreme Court will attempt to declare it uncons!@#$%^&*utional. However, in this case, anti-spam laws might have a method of approach phone calls do not.

 

The biggest relevent difference between spam by phone and spam by email is who pays for the spam. If it is by phone, the company telemarketing has to pay for the phone call. If it is by email, the email provider pays, and the bill gets footed to the reciever. Thus, when somebody spams by email, they are forcing somebody not only to view the message but to pay for the message being sent. While in reality this cost is insignificant, in legal terms spam can be construed as robbery.

[madhaha]

Aileron, you don't understand the true scale of the economics.

 

Internet backbone providers charge by the bandwidth used. Spam means good buisness for them. It is not in their interests to stop spam although they can make changes that would radically reduce spam. Local ISPs foot the bill but have no hope of stopping spam globally. The legislation tries to scare of spammers. Who will enforce it? Probably the poor local ISPs and the courts. Spammer make lots of money. They can fight hard long legal battles if they have to and its easy for them to setup stall again. They are very costly to catch and go to extreme lengths (often up to the level of "anonimity" that government agencies have) to not get caught. Whats more, companies can STILL legitimately sell tools who only purpose is to spam WITHOUT FACING ANY CONSEQUENCES. They can effectively DoS a local ISP with spam if they make a fuss.

 

Also, telemarketters have a BIG (if indirect) influence on the US senate. You can do you own dirt digging here.

 

So. They have the tools. They have the cash. They have support from high up. They have no morals. They can almost guarantee not being caught if they're smart. Anyone want to suggest a Better way of stopping them?

[Aileron]

My point was merely to prove that a bill, provided it was enacted, to reduce spam would be able to get past the first amendment. Since local ISPs pay for spam against their will, spammers do not have the theorhetical right to speak in this case. If anti-spam legislation was enacted, it wouldn't be uncons!@#$%^&*utional.

 

As for enforcement, that is a completely different set of problems. Step one is to recognize spam as a problem, step two is to deal with it. You are putting the cart before the horse.

 

As for the amount of money spammers make, it isn't enough. Yes, they make a lot, but lawyers make more. It is unlikely that most companies will get convicted. However, we don't have to do that. All we have to do is make it more expensive to defend spam than it is worth. Given the amount lawyers fees cost, anti spam laws have a shot, not of convicting companies, but of making spam unprofitable.

[madhaha]

Only if you can catch the spammers, which in most cases isn't possible. Its going to cost more to find and prosecute spammers than to ignore them and since the overheads of running a spamming operation are minimal whereas the overheads of finding spammers are going to be very expensive, at least in terms of manpower, catching spammers isn't really a sustainable activity.

 

You seem to view spammers are companies. They're more like individuals although there are numerous "spammer rings". They make lots of money and when you catch one you don't affect the others. -*BAD WORD*-, you make it more viable for the others to spam.

[Aileron]

My point is that the reason why people spam is to make money, profits specifically. This cannot be done if the spammer is spending his money paying for a lawyer and other court costs. Whether it is a company, individual, or ring this does not change.

 

If this law is enacted, the only two ways it would not work is if it isn't enforced or spammers keep their iden!@#$%^&*ies secret. The second cannot be done, because all profitable spam takes you to a website, the website to the company, the company to their records, their records to the spammer. The iden!@#$%^&*y of the spammer can be found if it is worth the time and money to do so.

 

That brings us then to your last point. Yes, it is easier for the individuals to delete spam than it is to prosecute. However, if you run the possibility of ISPs or especially a group of ISPs hiring an attorney to prosecute a high level spammer, you might save enough space to make it worth it. This obviously won't cover all cases, but it is better than nothing.

 

 

However, come to think of it that is beside the point. As it currently stands, many types of anti-spam software is illegal. This law would not only illegalize spam, but make it legal to fight spam. Without this law, any efforts made by individuals to try to stop spam would be illegal.

 

Its step 1 of 10. It won't finish the process, but it will start it. It won't solve the problem by itself, but without it the problem will not be solved.