Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/05/20/to-eliminate-spam/
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 20:41:35 -0700
From: Christopher Ambler <chris@private>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@private>
Am I missing the obvious? When those 20 go offshore the evening before the
new law is enacted, what then?
Christopher Ambler
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 09:22:25 +0530
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@private>
Organization: -ENOENT
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
CC: Brad Templeton <btm@private>
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private>
Declan McCullagh wrote:
> [In general I like Brad's ideas on spam, but I'm not so sure about this
> one. It's difficult to draft "only 200" legislation. Statutory language
> for critique, anyone? Remember that if it's state law, it must comply
> with Can Spam's partial preemption. --Declan]
The "top 200" is the Spamhaus "ROKSO" - the Registry of Known Spam
Operations.
This list does include several prolific and high volume spammers, most
of whose activities extensively violate can spam, and whose operations
are often based offshore, spread across several countries.
Brad's "top 200" legislation is, unfortunately, naive. Or sarcastic. I
wont underrate his intelligence so I'll say it is an attempt at sarcasm
While I acknowledge that prosecuting these top 200 spammers will lead to
a substantial dent in spam levels for a time, these spammers will be
replaced by a new top 200, possibly the same spammers under another
alias, or some of their associates - or probably the next 200 spammers
in line.
A simple analogy would be a pest infected warehouse. Take a can of bug
spray and use it on the 200 biggest and ugliest roaches in the building.
Then remember that there's a vast swamp just outside your warehouse and
you're going to get about 400 new roaches coming in, right after a long
and frustrating search for 200 roaches.
> If the thesis that they are doing most of the spam is true, we'll fix
> a lot of the spam problem (and scare away those who might consider
> entering the upper echelons of spamming.) If it's not enough the
> debate can resume over the best spam techniques.
Techniques? Well, I would suggest that the measures described in
http://www.oecd.org/sti/spam/toolkit/ would be quite useful, taken as a
whole ... useful to mitigate the problem and keep it at some kind of
reasonable level I guess.
> Element 1 - Anti-Spam Regulation
>
> Element 2 - International Enforcement and Co-operation
>
> Element 3 - Industry-Driven Solutions Against Spam
>
> Element 4 - Anti-Spam Technologies
>
> Element 5 - Education and Awareness Raising
>
> Element 6 - Co-operative Partnerships Against Spam
>
> Element 7 - Spam Metrics
>
> Element 8 - Outreach
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 23:04:47 -0700
From: Brad Templeton <btm@private>
Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@private>
CC: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>, Brad Templeton <btm@private>
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private> <428D5EF9.8050408@private>
On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 09:22:25AM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >[In general I like Brad's ideas on spam, but I'm not so sure about this
> >one. It's difficult to draft "only 200" legislation. Statutory language
> >for critique, anyone? Remember that if it's state law, it must comply
> >with Can Spam's partial preemption. --Declan]
>
>..........
>
> While I acknowledge that prosecuting these top 200 spammers will lead to
> a substantial dent in spam levels for a time, these spammers will be
> replaced by a new top 200, possibly the same spammers under another
> alias, or some of their associates - or probably the next 200 spammers
> in line.
>
Let me clarify with a bit of background. Anti-spammers, seeking spam
laws, are being far too perfectionist. They want to punish every spam
they can get their hands on. Some criticise any law that they think
lets through any spam as legitimizing it. So they push too hard, and
draft laws that are amazingly ineffective against spam and also scary
from a free speech standpoint -- worst of both worlds.
My suggestion is to set the bar fairly high to violate the law. For
example, sending _millions_ of bulk mails to people who don't know you.
The bar there is so high that no non-spammer is going to get caught by
the law. No ordinary speech could get chilled by a law that demanded
volumes in the millions. Nobody but the worst spammers would quake at
the law. (The old world DMA member companies which do million person
spams on paper might have once quaked at it, but even they have long ago
come around from any desire to do that in E-mail due to the negative
publicity it would generate.)
With the bar set high, the penalties can be much harsher and the value
in enforcing the law much higher. With no chilling of legit speech.
And no, I don't think if the 200 were put out of business with massive
fines that others would line up to take their places.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 10:33:30 -0400
From: John Mozena <john@private>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan@private>
Declan:
One of my concerns with Brad's proposal is that getting rid of the herbal
male enhancement, pr0n and relatives of dead Nigerian dictator spammers
without actually making spam illegal runs the risk of leaving the door wide
open for "legitimate" companies to start spamming. This is exactly the
outcome that the Direct Marketing Association and its allies on Capitol Hill
have been trying for with CAN-SPAM.
The DMA hopes that with the bottom-feeder spammers out of the way, consumers
will be more accepting of, in the words of past DMA President Bob Wientzen,
"offers of $500 off a General Motors car" showing up unsolicited in their
inboxes. While the DMA claims that its members would never, NEVER "spam"
consumers, they do so by twisting the commonly-accepted definition of "spam"
from "unsolicited [commercial|bulk] e-mail" to "unsolicited fraudulent
commercial e-mail". It's very clear from the DMA's support of CAN-SPAM and
its actions against tougher opt-in or global opt-out anti-spam legislation
at the federal and state levels that their goal is an Internet where scam
artists are hammered out of our inboxes, leaving the way clear for every
Fortune 500 company to send us their "targeted" marketing offers. DMA
officers and spokespeople have been very clear that they want the "one bite
of the apple" rule protected, meaning that every marketer gets at least one
opportunity to contact you via unsolicited e-mail, forcing you to opt out if
you don't want any subsequent communications.
For sender-pays methodologies of direct marketing such as postal mail and
telemarketing, where there's an incremental cost-per-message and a
nontrivial cost of entry, opt-out is at least slightly functional. With the
low cost of entry and the essentially zero incremental cost-per-message of
e-mail, opt-out just wouldn't work should legitimate companies start using
spam as a marketing tool. The math game we use at CAUCE to illustrate the
potential size of the problem should spam go mainstream is that there are
roughly 23 million small businesses in the U.S., if only one percent of
those businesses got your e-mail address and each of that one percent sent
you just one opt-out e-mail per year, you would average 630 messages in your
inbox per day, all legal under CAN-SPAM.
I'm all with Brad on turning the existing crop of spammers into smoking
craters, but we need to make sure that their place in our inboxes isn't
taken by better-funded, better-groomed replacements with large lobbying
budgets.
John Mozena
Co-founder & VP
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE, www.cauce.org)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 09:23:32 -0400
From: James M. Ray <jray@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private>
>[In general I like Brad's ideas on spam, but I'm not so sure about this
>one. It's difficult to draft "only 200" legislation. Statutory language
>for critique, anyone?
...
I don't have a critique, but maybe -- just maybe -- that top-twenty are
already breaking a law that's on the books (the law bookshelves I used
to take care of groaned under the weight of state and federal law -- I
saw HUGE tomes grow ever-bigger!). In fact, they might even want to
ignore a few victimless crime laws (which are also on the books, but I
guess it's more lucrative to catch druggies if you can steal all the stuff
they own) in pursuit of the top-20. I'll bet, if someone paid me, I could
find some sort of law broken by most-all of the top 20, and perhaps a
very public arrest/stopping of those would affect the other 180 or so.
JMR
--
Regards, James M. Ray <jray@private>
"[M]arijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than
marijuana ever could." -- William F. Buckley Jr.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 22:55:08 -0500 (CDT)
From: J.A. Terranson <measl@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
CC: politech@private
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private>
On Thu, 19 May 2005, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> So let's put the idea of 200 core spammers to the test. People should
> draft a law that only hits those 200 spammers. A law very tightly
> targetted on activity that everybody agrees is illegal. Yes, a law that
> misses a lot of possible spam which some will decry is "legitimizing"
> that spam. But one that will get those core spammers, get them easily,
> and get them hard. It will fund and demand enforcement. (These spammers
> are already breaking existing laws but nothing funds the enforcement of
> them.)
Unfortunately, we had such a law in California. That this law would have
been effective was the entire *reason* for CAN-SPAM's quick alternative
authorship and passage.
In short, government wants to be SEEN "doing something" (CAN-SPAM), but at
the same time wants to let the spammers off the hook as "businessmen just
trying to eke out an honest living". Californias pre-empted law would
have, with close to 100% certainty, knocked off each and every one of
those 200 spammers. And the 200 that may have tried to step into the
vaccuum.
Face it - our congresscritters and senators are a corrupt as any third
world bannana replublic, and they do not give a hoot about a "mere spam
problem". Especially when these spammers can make significant "campaign
contributions" with their ill gotten gains.
CAN-SPAM needs to be REPEALED, not re-written. The tools to end the
problem are already here, and on the books in California. Lets let them
do their job.
--
Yours,
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin@private
0xBD4A95BF
"Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always
be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."
Joseph Pulitzer
1907 Speech
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a
proposal [sp]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 08:54:14 -0500
From: Bartlett D Cleland <bcleland@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
Declan --
The approach to take would likely be to draft language that
picks out some certain feature of these 200. That is still always a
trick as frankly it never seems to get all or still is overbroad.
Bartlett D. Cleland
Director
Center for Technology Freedom
Institute for Policy Innovation
www.IPI.org
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 23:42:58 -0400
From: Paul Lockaby <lockaby@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private>
And let's arrest the 200 most important mob members and have that
stop organized crime. And then we'll arrest the 200 people who
traffic the most drugs and see if that stops drugs from being
smuggled. Problem is once you pull someone out of power, someone else
steps into place and fills the void. Obviously someone is making
money off of spam, and when there is money to be made you will have
no shortage of volunteers to make it.
-Paul
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 00:38:53 -0400
From: Danny <ayavuzk@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private>
Sounds good to me. I had a feeling that there weren't many people smart
enough AND technically literate enough AND corrupt and self-serving enough
to be high-level spammers... if we get the "supervillains" out of the way,
Metropolis will be safe once again. Where's Captain Internet when you need
him?
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 22:45:51 -0600
From: Jerome Borden <jcborden@private>
Reply-To: jcborden@private
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
Declan,
I don't think it is "only 200", although there may be a relatively small
number at the core.
Reason why is the number of advertisements we have all seen that lead with
"earn money at home", "fire your boss", etc.
The people who respond to these ads get a program (that they paid for, of
course) and then they put it to work trying to sell the next level.
It only takes a few iterations of this to result in an awesome flood of
spam.
Yours Truly,
Jerome from Layton, UT
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] To eliminate spam, arrest 200 people: a proposal
[sp]
Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 00:03:34 -0500
From: Sanford Olson <solson@private>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
References: <428D55DB.8010505@private>
Why not.....
- turn the "top 20" into celebrities and then send the paparazzi to harass
them
- put their faces on milk cartons, so their kids will know what they do for
a living
- demonstrate outside their homes and businesses (ala anti-abortion groups)
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