I hesistate to get into this. I saw the long "what to do about
spam" threads in recent months but avoided reading most of the posts.
But here goes...
In
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic,sci.electronics.cad,sci.electronics.design,sci.electronics.misc,alt.primenet.recovery,
Jim Thompson said:
But it's the ultimate cure for rogue ISPs who support spammers. Look
up NANAE and SPEWS.
I've seen many stories of users complaining to/suing the ISP and/or
the entity publishing the blacklist, rather than to their host for
also hosting spammers. But these are the loud minority. I imagine
these would be the same people wanting to rescind the law you propose
below when they get blocked, rather than change hosts.
As some of you may know I am working with Arizona legislators,
Senators Mead and Martin, and nationally with Senator McCain's office
to formulate anti-spam laws.
The more I look at the problem the more I realize that it's a hopeless
case, EXCEPT, consider the following:
Currently *fraudulent* spam cases are prosecuted by the FTC.
You mean "spam which has fraudulent CONTENT." All unsolicited email
is fraudulent in the means of its transmission. Email is essentially a
shared resource, and spam is blatant abuse of that resource. It is
against the terms of virtually every ISP. But you already know all
that...
I would change that by having *all* spam complaints go to the FTC who
would track them for origin point (ISP) and actual advertiser.
The FTC would deal with the ISP *and* the advertiser to stop the
problem.
There would be *severe* *criminal* penalties against any ISP or
advertiser, who resided in the US, who did not cease and desist.
How about having some sort of penalty (for the advertiser/source)
for the FIRST offense?
Of course, the second offense is likely to come from another ISP,
and I don't think you could do more to them than to the first ISP.
Foreign ISPs who refuse to cooperate would simply be blacklisted
Very good ... that sort of thing is done now by some.
and
US ISPs would be required to honor the blacklist and block *all*
traffic from the rogues.
Now THAT sounds scary. Having The Government require blocking sure
seems like a bad precedent to me. I've not heard of this sort of thing
being done yet, and hope it never happens. Governments would love to
regulate the net, and spam (certainly the worst problem on the net)
would be the perfect excuse to get their foot in the door.
One of the earliest spam-related bills in Congress, the "Smith
bill" (from circa 1996-1997) would treat unsolicited email just like
unsolicited faxes (where the receiver quite obviously, plainly and
unwillingly pays for the sender's use of paper and ink/toner. Under
the junk fax law, a recipient can get $500 for each unsolicited fax in
small claims court. Junk faxes were becoming quite common about ten
years ago when fax machines were first becoming common in many
businesses and offices, but virtually disappeared overnight when this
became law. This law apparently isn't as well known as it should be,
else there would still be virtually no junk faxes.
Here's a link to info on the junk fax law:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/other/fs/fs002105.php3
Out of a million recipients of a spam, there would be a few would
track down the source (even of political, religious or other
non-advertising spam) to get their $500. Once someone has determined
the entity responsible for a spam, he can post it, and many others can
use that info for the same spam, thus a high-volume spammer could end
up with court judgements to millions of people for a sum of over one
billion dollars.
End of problem.
Why?
The legitimate subscribers of the rogue ISPs will take their business
elsewhere, thus there's a huge economic penalty for misbehaving.
What do you lurkers think?
I still like the original Smith bill. It doesn't enable The
Government to get into blocking or other types of interference with
the Internet, yet it enables the recipient to get a legal judgement
against the perpetrator.