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Government Has No Business Regulating Spam
from the so-now-what? dept
An interesting opinion piece from Mitch Wagner saying that the government has no business regulating spam, and the further we go into the process, the worse it looks. Basically, the argument is that all of the current laws look ineffective - and are actually designed to legitimize certain kinds of spam. This, clearly, would do little to stop spam, and would actually encourage it to become more widespread. He suggests that new technologies and existing fraud laws should be good enough to prevent spam. It's an interesting viewpoint, and one that I'm beginning to agree with myself. So, my question is: is it impossible for the government to enact good anti-spam laws, or is it just the current set of bills that are no good?
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Spam bills
Basically, a good anti-spam bill need only say that it is illegal to send bulk marketing e-mail (ie, a batch of 100 e-mails or more, to ensure that users wouldn't be liable for spamming just by e-mailing a resume to a potential employer or such) to users who have not opted-in to a newsletter/marketing list/whatever and give users the ability to sue spammers directly rather than having to hope that their state AG or federal prosecutors are willing to take up the case. Extra-stiff penalties for spammers who forge headers and/or use deceptive subject lines and really stiff penalties for those who send porn spam.
Finally, a good bill would contain no exceptions to any of the above rules -- no exemptions for non-profits, no exemptions for political campaigns and so on.
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Or are anti-government techies pro-spam?
If you ask any special interest group in Washington, they will tell you that politicians are "ignorant" and need to be "educated", that their enemies are "well-heeled donors". Bashing the government is a sign of amateurish lobbyists who are trying to scam customers for fake donations.
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Re: Or are anti-government techies pro-spam?
Are you defining the IT indsutry as the 'direct marketing' people or the spammers themselfes? Or perhaps the people who sell anti-spam?
Because the rest of the IT people, the ones who keep the Internet up, the ones who manage servers, have to devote thier time, enery and bandwidth to SPAM. And they would like to see it gone.
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Simple Solution - Don't Outlaw SPAM.
You don't outlaw SPAM, you outlaw the sale of any item or service via SPAM.
Everyone knows that SPAMmers go to great lengths to protect their own identity by using invalid return e-mail addresses, open mail relays, etc., and thus they are often times very difficult to find.
The vendors who sell stuff through SPAM however have to make themselves visible either through a website or telephone number that *can* be traced (with the exception of 1 or 2 SPAMs I seem to get every day that offer a product and provide absolutely no way to get in touch with them...).
If we make it a federal felony crime with mandatory jail time and steep fines ($5 per person SPAMmed is plenty steep) to sell any product or service via SPAM, and then go out and arrest the people that do so, people will stop selling via SPAM and the SPAM senders will eventually go out of business.
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Re: Simple Solution - Don't Outlaw SPAM.
I think a more appropriate solution is make the spammers pay. A common spammer argument is "people get junk (snail) mail all the time and they don't complain about that!" Well, those juunk mailers PAY for sending it, thus keeping the USPS alive and kicking. So, if something could be designed to make spammers pay to send me spam, thus keeping some organization up and running and employing 100,000 or so people, I'd be fine with spam.
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