Senate passes antispam bill

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Opt-out our representatives!

By committing their lousy law to paper, the US government has only made things worse by now giving spammers the legal grounds to operate and avoid prosecution. By default, anything that is not specifically addressed in the law becomes a legal gray-area that a spammer, if caught, can hold up in court and prove they didn't violate any provision in the law.

Think about this. How can they define the meaning of Opt-Out? When you opt-out of a piece of spam, does the opt-out cover all future mail from:

1.) the e-mail address?
2.) the server?
3.) the IP address?
4.) the marketing company?
5.) the product?
6.) the product or service provider?

It's impossible to define because changing 1 variable will and essentially make every spam from any of the sources above, a unique 'new offer' that has to be opted-out of again. Spammers already do this to avoid spam filters, so they don't even have to change their methods to circumvent the opt-out provisions. You can't hit a moving target.

The truth is that most spam has been illegal all along, because it uses stolen bandwidth, stolen e-mail accounts, breaking and entering someones server, and several other illegal activities, yet there have been only a few arrests or convictions because it's nearly impossible to catch them and it's too costly for most ISP's to pursue except for the few worst offenders.

Creating more legislation based on a currently unenforceable model is only 'putting teeth in the mouth of a dog who won't hunt', as we say in Georgia!

If it wasn't such a lame idea that will never work, a 'do-not-spam' list should have been required to be 'Opt-out' as well, thereby beating the pro-spam special interests at their own game by using the Opt-out provision they forced through, to cut them off from every legit e-mail address until someone opted out of the list. All ISP's would submit all the valid e-mail addresses from their system quarterly to update the list.

Posted by: TheSlumlord   Posted on: 11/25/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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