Re: SPAM bill and editorializing
Re: SPAM bill and editorializing
- Subject: Re: SPAM bill and editorializing
- From: Lila Bednar <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:16:23 -0500
Well, I'm one of the "ones".
While I share many of your feelings (and I've been active in spreading
word about anti-spam measures), I do object to the remarks to and about
people who might not have been active for reasons you don't know, but
apparently are willing to make negative assumptions about.
~Lila
VP Membership
Washington Apple Pi
On Dec 12, 2003, at 1:00 AM, email@hidden wrote:
--__--__--
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:42:26 -0500
To: email@hidden
From: MUG NEWS <email@hidden>
Subject: RE: SPAM bill headed to President
Thanks, Dan East for posting...
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved an amended
version of a bill that will allow penalties of up to $6
million and five years in jail for sending some e-mail spam,
the last step before the bill can be signed
into law by President George W. Bush.
... and for rubbing salt into the wounds of anti-spam advocates.
Unfortunately, all our efforts to mobilize the user group community
failed to move HR 2214 into the "Bill of Choice" -- which would
have actually done something about spam.
The bill passed as cited above was the least of the bills likely to
do anything about spam. Its modifications in the road to the
President's desk obliterated any sign of 'teeth' in the bill,
and subtly modified the wording to actually ligitimize spam.
In fact, the bill actually INCREASES the amount of spam email users
can expect to see. And they'll be helpless to do anything about it.
Why?
First, the law makes provisions for "legal" spam. So anyone who
wants to continue spamming can do so as long as they comply to
the word of the law. The big Madison Avenue firms can now safely
and confidently jump on the spam band wagon with their huge
budgets and clients who own millions of email addresses but were
previously afraid of sending UCE.
Secondly, the new bill will make many spam filters and spam
filtering services potentially illegal. So huge dollars spent
in whitelisting/blacklisting and extortion money paid to the
services like Brightmail could potentially trigger 5th Amendment
cases on behalf of the spammers.
Additionally the new bill specifically overrides any
means of actually fighting spam in other venues:
1) Overrides state laws
Like the tough new anti-spam laws in Virginia and California
Which means AOL, in Virginia can no longer pursue spammers
for "harvesting" addresses, or forging headers -- since
July this is a FELONY under the Virginia law. (Same level as
robbing a convenience store with a hand gun.)
2) Prohibits "Private (individual) Right of Action"
in other words an avid spam fighter like me cannot sue a
spammer. The case cannot be tried by an individual.
Which means those who could prosecute spammers before,
will not be able to.
" ... enforcement of the law would be rare and infrequent.
The law would only permit the FTC, state Attorneys General,
and ISPs to bring actions against violators. "
http://www.cauce.org/news/index.shtml
So, you're in the hands of those who prosecuted a total of 12
spam cases last year out of an average of 60,000 spam complaints
per week. Wow, we sure want to rely on them!
So, I do not know what Dan had in mind with his post, other than
just to let everyone know about the bill's passing --
it's certainly a discredit to the user group community --
who *could* have done better -- and certainly nothing to brag about.
The loss of "Private Right of Action" is a big slam to me
personally becuase over the past three months I've spent literally
hundreds of hours building dossiers of several dozen of America's
worst spammers to bring into Virginia courts.
Now, there's a good possibility all that time has been wasted.
With the spammers moving into cyber-terrorism tactics of worms,
trojans and zombies, it's no longer a nuisance that you can shrug
off referring to this or that spam "filter" - it an eminent threat
of cyber crime. You can also expect them soon on your cell phones.
If George signs on that dotted line, real and true anti-spam
advocacy will have lost the war. Because of apathy, complacency
and false dependency on filters, spam will have to become an
accepted way of life for computer and email users. We will have
given up our personal right to email privacy, in order to let
the spammers exploit theirs.
So don't complain the next your child is found looking at rape,
hate or porno pictures in their email, or your parents are scamed
in insurance fraud, or business' productivity is stolen.
We as the computer using community had our chance to do something
-- but didn't.
:-) 'nuff said
Fred
Read the bill:
http://www.cauce.org/S877.pdf (PDF file)
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html
In 4,000 narratives collected by the Telecommunications Research
& Action Center and reviewed by Pew researchers as part of the
study, e-mail users told of how their accounts had been hijacked
by spammers, how the onslaught of pornography had created marital
problems, how untold hours had been lost to the delete key and
to tinkering with technological fixes.
Anti-spam expert David Kramer, a Palo Alto attorney criticized the
bill for setting guidelines for acceptable spam.
"If this bill passes, Congress will have legitimized spam
as method of marketing,"
<http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113065,00.asp>
Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology...
"spammers hide their tracks well, bouncing their mail off
international mail servers. If you can't trace the people, then
there's no way to go after them"...
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113065,00.asp
More than half of the 30 billion e-mail messages exchanged daily
are spam, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew
Internet and American Life Project. It estimates that spamming
costs American businesses between $10 billion and $87 billion
each year in antispam equipment and lost productivity.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112430,00.asp
(ten to one few listees actually read this post.)
End of augd Digest
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