http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-5083311.html Spam deja vu September 29, 2003, 6:45 AM PT By Declan McCullagh In June, politicians in Washington finally declared an all-out war on spam, vowing to take speedy action to curb the Internet's No. 1 menace. One senator gave an impassioned floor speech warning that without a law, "we risk the destruction of all legitimate expression and commerce on the information superhighway." The New York Times predicted "a lively congressional debate" on spam over the next few months. Well, almost. Those events did occur, but the year was 1997. Since then--more than six years later--Congress has accomplished precisely nothing on spam. No federal law restricting the flow of unsolicited bulk e-mail has ever been enacted, and no law will be enacted until next year, if ever. At this rate, a delay of another six years wouldn't be surprising. It's time for the tech community to realize that turning to the federal government for help in this area is simply not productive. It's like trying to teach a cow to configure BGP routers: You won't succeed, and you'll annoy the cow. [...remainder snipped...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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