CAN-SPAM act - a history lesson - RE: Re: Internet legislation impact

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh () hserus net>
Date: December 18, 2008 5:48:08 AM EST
To: "'François Verbeek'" <f_verbeek () mac com>
Cc: <dave () farber net>
Subject: CAN-SPAM act - a history lesson  - RE: [IP] Re:   Internet  
legislation impact

Oh by the way – forgot. About the can-spam act.. there’s a bit of  
trivia behind it.

There was the California state antispam law (SB 186, enacted in  
September 2003) – one that had very stringent optin provisions,  
substantial financial liability ($1000 per spam) and significant  
longarm enforcement built into it.   Several marketers were worried  
enough to strongly consider unsubscribing all California addresses  
from their mailing lists.

Then this very interesting spam bill made their way remarkably quickly  
through the house.. getting passed and signed into law mere days  
before the California law was supposed to take effect (Jan 1 2004).    
And of course, pre-empting the California state law as this was  
Federal law.

The bill was proposed by Richard Burr (R-NC), F.James Sensenbrenner Jr  
(R-WI) and WJ “Billy”  Tauzin (R-LA).   It was optout in nature.  And  
meanwhile a tougher proposal began to circulate too – from Reps  
Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Gene Green (D-TX).  It was optin in nature.

The Tauzin-Sensenbrenner bill emerged the eventual winner .. though  
the final bill was a compromise between the two bills, a compromise  
that certainly didn’t go as far as the Wilson bill, let alone the  
California antispam act that it was rushed through to supersede.

A couple of months before Jack Hitt interviewed a couple of spammers  
for the NY Times in September 2003 -  interviewing a couple of Boca  
Raton bulk mailers – Richard Colbert and Bill Waggoner – who, the  
article says wouldn’t be out of place in a Carl Hiaasen novel.    
Here’s an interesting set of quotes from the article, that say it  
all.   The spammers loved it – even before it was signed into law.



http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E0D71E3AF93BA1575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
<<<The leading one, written by Representative Richard M. Burr,  
Republican of North Carolina, and sponsored by two influential  
Republican representatives, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin  
and Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, more or less codifies Colbert and  
Waggoner's view.

As first written, the Burr bill was meant to outlaw only fraudulent  
spam, in order to protect commerce on the Internet. ''From our point  
of view, we are trying to retain e-mail as a legitimate form of  
commercial activity,'' one Burr staff member said. ''If you want to  
sell a product, you should be able to do that with e-mail.''>>>

<<But the public debate on spam is changing fast. Within a few weeks,  
the momentum moved away from the power brokers like Sensenbrenner and  
Tauzin and toward less known representatives whose proposals are  
tougher -- mainly Heather A. Wilson, a Republican from New Mexico, and  
Gene Green, a Democrat from Texas.

''The Burr bill approaches the problem from the point of view of  
commerce,'' Wilson observed delicately. ''We approach it from a  
consumer perspective.'' >>





From: François Verbeek [mailto:f_verbeek () mac com]
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:46 PM
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian
Cc: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Internet legislation impact

Thanks :-)

F.

On 18 Dec 2008, at 10:12, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:


If you want accurate and unbiased figures on spam - look at these  
estimates for example – the MAAWG metrics reports : http://www.maawg.org/about/EMR

Totally unbiased – aggregated and anonymized stats sourced from among  
the membership base of MAAWG (which includes several of the largest  
ISPs and email providers In the world).  These have even been quoted  
by the OECD..

http://www.maawg.org/about/MAAWG_2008-Q2_Metrics_Report9.pdf for  
example - the latest available – says :

Comparing the ratio of abusive emails during similar periods, the  
current second quarter of 2008 showed
an insignificant drop of slightly more than 1% compared to the same  
quarter in 2007. However, the
number of unaltered emails delivered to users inboxes during Q2 2008,  
260 per mailbox, was higher than
the 189 during Q2 2007, and also higher than the 240 reported  
delivered in Q1 2008 metric.
Selected Ratios
Dropped Connections and Blocked / Tagged Inbound Mail per Mailbox – 1527
Ratio – Dropped / Blocked / Tagged to Delivered Mail -  5.87 (that is,  
85.4% abusive mail)
Number of Unaltered (that is non tagged) delivered mail per mailbox –  
260

This report covers more than 200 million mailboxes with 100 billion  
delivered email. All of the original
reports are available at http://www.maawg.org/about/EMR


From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:15 PM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: Internet legislation impact



Begin forwarded message:

From: François Verbeek <f_verbeek () mac com>
Date: December 18, 2008 3:18:13 AM EST
To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Internet legislation impact

Dave, would one of your readers know where the estimates come from?
An antispam software vendor throwing '100billion a day' in an  
interview is not a very reliable number, in my opinion.

Francois.

On 17 Dec 2008, at 17:07, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Brownstein, Charles" <Charles.Brownstein () hsi dhs gov>
Date: December 17, 2008 9:02:47 AM EST
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: Internet legislation impact

see:

"Failure of law to deter spammers shows limits of U.S. legislation in  
a world of global cybercrime"

at

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/100608-can-spam.html

Archives <feed-icon-10x10.jpg>
<listbox-logo-small.jpg>

Archives <feed-icon-10x10.jpg>
<listbox-logo-small.jpg>






-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com