Lessig's Spam Bounty Idea To Show Up In Congress?

from the wow dept

A lot of folks in the anti-spam world know about Larry Lessig's idea to fight spam. He wants to put a bounty on spammers - and whoever tracks them down would get the prize. He famously announced a wager last year, that if such a law came to pass, and it didn't cut down on the amount of spam out there, he would resign his position at Stanford. Well, the first part of his wager is about to come true. Representative Zoe Lofgren is apparently getting ready (with Lessig by her side) to introduce a "spam bounty" bill in Congress. According to this article, the "bounty hunter" would get 20% of the reward. Of course, to actually track down the spammer might take a bit of work, but I could easily see a small group of successful techies using this as an opportunity to earn some extra cash, while throwing spammers in jail. Update: In somewhat related news, rival firms AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo have jointly announced plans to team up in the fight against spam. The three firms will work together to track down spammers, and to come up with methods that reduce the impact of spam on their users. Update again: Declan McCullough, who Lessig has asked to be the judge in his wager (the two are well known for not being the best of friends), has explained why he thinks the bill will fail if it passes - and also why it's a bad bill that will cause more problems than it solves.

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