Interesting People mailing list archives
more on No, US antispam bill is not death to anonymity
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 21:37:59 -0500
I am at a total loss to see how one enforces this in a world wide Internet. Seems to me that it forces the off shore of the spam industry. and does little to eliminate spam. Australia says 75% of their spam comes from China. How would this law help us again?
Dave
Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 01:24:35 +0000 From: johnl () iecc com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: [IP] No, US antispam bill is not death to anonymity To: dave () farber net Cc: > This bill makes it a crime to use any false or misleading > information in a domain name or email account application, and then > send an email. That would make a large fraction of hotmail users > instant criminals. If you actually read the text of the bill, you'll see that it makes it illegal to send commercial email or transactional mail ("we shipped your order" or "your account balance is $19.34") with false or misleading header information. The only Hotmail users who this would make into criminals are the ones who sign up for accounts and send spam to make your body parts bigger. Anonymous advertising is an oxymoron. The point of ads is to get people to buy stuff, so only makers or vendors of the stuff that's advertised have an interest in doing so, and if they can't find you, they can't to buy from you. I suppose this would make "astroturf" fake grass-roots campaigns harder, but I can't get too upset about that. Anonymous mail that isn't commercial isn't affected at all. Don't take my word for it, read the act. It's not that long. There's plenty wrong with the CAN SPAM act, but let's worry about its real faults, not imagined ones. Regards,John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web
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- more on No, US antispam bill is not death to anonymity Dave Farber (Nov 22)