Re: surge in spam email (fwd)

[Brad <brad () americanisp net>]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, David Charlap wrote:

> "Derek J. Balling" wrote:
> > I dunno,... using your list as a guide, I don't find a lot that US
> > legislators can do... last I heard, .au, .pl, .de, .pt, .uk, .sg,
> > .tw, .fr, .nz, and .es are all outside of the "long arm o' the law".
> > I didn't take the time to see how many of the [IP] and .(com|net|org)
> > entries were actually in the US or were themselves foreign, but the
> > top 6 entries in your list would "laugh at those silly American
> > laws". That puts the majority of spam out of the reach of the law,
> > making the law a useless waste of time. This is definitely an area
> > that self-governance (ORBS, MAPS, et al, choose YOUR personal
> > favorite... "let's not argue over who killed who") is best.
>
> Keep in mind that the spam usually doesn't originate from the relay site
> your computer is receiving it from.

True.

> Judging from the "send your money here" addresses and phone numbers that
> I usually find in the spam, the people sending the spam (or the people
> contracting to have the spam sent) are mostly in the US.

True.

> With a proper set of laws on the books, law enforcement could simply
> read the content of the spam to get a phone number, address or PO box,
> and prosecute whoever owns it.  The fact that they abused a foreign
> server in the process shouldn't change anything.

The only problem with that is the simple fact that geting
innocent people in trouble is more likely.  For example:
"Dumb Person A" sends a million SPAMs to anyone who will
complain about it.  In the message, they put a note telling
the recipiant to send $5 to "Innocent Victim B"'s Home/PO
BOX address.  Then person B gets all kinds of complaints,
and if the law read the email message, then they would pay
the price too.

-Brad

> -- David