--- From: John Gilmore <gnu@private> Subject: US antispam bill is death to anonymity Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:43:00 -0800 This bill makes it a crime to use any false or misleading information in a domain name or email account application, and then send an email. That would make a large fraction of hotmail users instant criminals. It also makes it a crime to remove or alter information in message headers in ways that would make it harder for a police officer to determine who had sent the email. Anonymizers will be illegal as soon as this bill becomes law. There are MANY, MANY other things wrong with it -- including the fact that most of its provisions apply to *ALL* commercial email, not just BULK commercial email -- and that it takes zero account of the First Amendment, attempting to list what topics someone can validly send messages about, while outlawing all other topics that relate to commercial transactions. If it passes, I think I can make a criminal out of just about any company. Companies are liable for spam that helps them, even if they had no part in sending it. Read the bill yourself: http://news.com.com/pdf/ne/2003/FINALSPAM.pdf And weep. And then call your Congressman. Everyone's common sense goes out the window when the topic is spam. They're willing to sacrifice whatever principles they have. And you already know how few principles Congress had left. John http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1024_3-5110622.html Congress Poised for Vote on Anti-Spam Bill Declan McCullagh Published: November 21, 2003 Congress has reached an agreement on antispam legislation and could vote on it as early as Friday afternoon, a move that would end more than six years of failed attempts to enact a federal law restricting unsolicited commercial e-mail. Negotiators from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives said Friday that the legislation was a "historic" accomplishment with support from key Democrats and Republicans in both chambers. "For the first time during the Internet-era, American consumers will have the ability to say no to spam," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., said in a statement. [...] If the measure becomes law, certain forms of spam will be officially legalized. The final bill says spammers may send as many "commercial electronic mail messages" as they like--as long as the messages are obviously advertisements with a valid U.S. postal address or P.O. box and an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Junk e-mail essentially would be treated like junk postal mail, with nonfraudulent e-mail legalized until the recipient chooses to unsubscribe. [...] One hotly contested dispute has been resolved: The bill would pre-empt more restrictive state laws, including one that California enacted in September. That law established an opt-in standard and was scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1. With final passage of this bill, the core of California's law would never take effect. [...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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