Previous Politech message: "Ray Everett-Church on House bill: It's actually pro-spam!" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04770.html --- From: "Greg Kavalec" <gregat_private> To: <declanat_private> Cc: <rayat_private> Subject: RE: Ray Everett-Church on House bill: It's actually pro-spam! Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 13:14:49 -0500 > Any legislation that permits all of America's estimated 23 million > small businesses to legally send everyone at least one email cannot > be considered anti-spam. Declan The spam problem today is 99% one of 'no one to yell at'. Messages with legitimate headers WILL produce repercussions. I.e. TOS's & AUP's at the ISP or further up the ladder. MOST legitimate business already know better, Ray's estimated 23 million small businesses included. Those that don't will learn. Peace G. Waleed Kavalec --- From: "SteelHead" <bill@ries-knight.net> To: <declanat_private>, <politechat_private> Cc: <rayat_private>, "SteelHead" <bill@ries-knight.net> References: <5.2.1.1.0.20030523130612.046ca6e8at_private> Subject: Re: Ray Everett-Church on House bill: It's actually pro-spam! Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 11:32:37 -0700 Declan, Here is my response to my House Representative, thanks for the good resons Mr. Church. Bill Ries-Knight Stockton, CA *************** Honorable Richard Pombo, Please take the time to read the posting from the politechbot newsletter following my message, I pasted it below and the words used are far better than mine. I spend about 15 hours a week dealing with SPAM on my servers which host only a few domains. That is 15 hours out of an 80 hour work week. If I have to deal with "unsolicited" email that is officially sanctioned, I will have to hire a person just to filter through the email coming to my personal accounts. The solution to SPAM or UCE is simple. Require that a prior business relationship exist. Require that the sender of the mail have a file of names ASKING to be on HIS/HER list. Prevent the commercial sale/rental of supposed "opt-in lists." Place severe penalties on the domains and businesses and organizations using the SPAM to solicit services, goods etc, even if they are supposedly "free." SPAM is a form of electronic advertising that causes my mail server to use it's resources to provide free service to the sender of SPAM. I would say that out of every 1000 mails I get, 500 are related to mailing list business, and another 450 are related to SPAM.; the remaining 50 are the results of business communications that are legit, and if I spend my day filtering through those, it is a waste of my time. Mr. Pombo, how much work would you get done for your representatives if you were busy fielding phone calls all day without a support staff? now let's make it worse. Out of the 400 phone calls you can handle in a normal day, 350 of them are people that are selling you something. Assuming it takes you just 30 seconds to respond to each of them, that is almost 3 hours wasted just to deal with those calls. If you get a bum call, it ties up your phone line, and a real call is less likely to reach you. You get 50 calls in a row that are selling you Viagra(r)(tm) and new financing for your home, how likely are you to really deal properly with the next call which is a request for help with a constituent matter you really care about? Please dump any "ANTI-SPAM" legislation which allows a sender even one free mailing. Please dump any legislation which does not penalize the "site or business" promoted in the spam. Please dump any legislation which fails to make the professional spammer, <defined as a person getting revenue or promoting anything which involves the exchange of money for goods or services or public issues> subject for a felony under interstate theft of services. We need relief, but it must be real. Someone could ask all of your constituents to call all lines and send faxes to your offices in California and Washington DC from home and office and cell phones for an 8 hour period to give you a taste of what spam is like, but that might be a violation of some harassment law or some such. If it happened, think of the work that would *not* get done as a result. Regards, Bill Ries-Knight Stockton, CA 95204 ********************************* Previous Politech message: "New House anti-spam bill features stiff criminal penalties" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04769.html --- From: "Ray Everett-Church" <rayat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: RE: New House anti-spam bill features stiff criminal penalties Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 10:00:06 -0700 > http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1009467.html This bill simply creates a set of baseline standards for truthfulness, which if the spammer can meet, they can send as much spam as they wish. This characteristic, common to all the leading spam bills, makes it a gross misnomer to call them "anti-spam." "Anti-consumer," sure. "Pro-spam," even. But not "anti-spam." Any legislation that permits all of America's estimated 23 million small businesses to legally send everyone at least one email cannot be considered anti-spam. And any bill that limits a consumer's recourse to clicking an opt-out link 23 million times isn't going to make our lives any better. By limiting enforcement to Attorneys General or the FTC, with no recourse for consumers, these bills virtually guarantee the status quo: extremely limited enforcement. Even the FTC and state AGs have said giving them more enforcement power without commensurate resources is a waste of time. This new bill mirrors the same opt-out approach taken in other proposals, and in virtually all the existing state spam laws. Opt-out laws have let the problem grow to the state it is today; no one in Congress can supply an adequate explanation as to why opt-out at a national level will make any difference. Opt-out in Korea has been an unmitigated disaster and their legislature is rushing to repair the global damage their opt-out law has done to their Internet economy. California's opt-out law is being scrapped. And the European Union knew better than to waste time with a discredited approach and went straight to opt-in. Congress bears the burden of explaining to the American people why these discredited approaches are the centerpiece of every proposal they have presented. Consumer and anti-spam groups have united in their opposition to these bills. Please see http://www.cauce.org/news for the joint letter we sent to all the committee chairmen and ranking members yesterday. -Ray Everett-Church Counsel, CAUCE ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu May 29 2003 - 01:31:42 PDT