A World of Useless Spam Laws

Spammers should be $$$ punished. Have $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for the second and $150,000 for the third and a week of prison time.

If they fine a few spammers then they already have extra cash to finance a special department that will deal with new fines.

How did the legislatures expect to even find the spammer? If the guy is operating off shore then all the laws in the US aren't going to do anything.

does the can spam act say spam or advertisements require a prefix in the subject line? i think korean spammers have to have '±¤°í' (which means advertisement, korean encoding) in the subject line. example, "(±¤°í) buy some drugs!". this makes it easier to sort and delete spam. i think i've seen spam with "ADV" in the subject. where does that come from?

Next they'll write laws to try to regulate the weather.

This is as simple as pie.

Postal mail doesn't get as much as spam as e-mail. Why? Because it costs money to send postal mail.

So, we just need to start charging a fee for sending e-mail.(even a fraction of a cent per sent e-mail would add up to millions upon millions for spammers)

I don't know about you, but I would gladly pay a penny per legit e-mail that I send if that would mean getting rid of spam e-mails.

Naw. People that don't spam end up paying also. I catagorically reject any solution that puts the burden on anyone other than the spammers and their ISP's.

I will say it again. Refuse all port 25 traffic from the ISP's that host/allow spam. Start with MCI, first thing Monday the rest of the world blocks their IP space.

Let MCI figure out how to stop it on their end. They afterall are the ones making money hosting spammers.

I'd much rather see lawmakers stop pandering to the marketing industry, and lay down a foundation of legislation with some balls and teeth.

From there, there's a bunch of options to explore, from authentication options, to ISPs actually keeping their networks clean.

I say start hitting ISPS with class action lawsuits. Start costing them more money then they take in from spammers. A lot of spam comes from right here in the US and is bounced off foreign servers.

just give those spammers life in prison

it doesn't work cuz there's little to no effort by the gov't to prosecute them.. what they need to do is prosecute those spammers and take all their money

There is one major problem with charging for email. Just like all the other criminals out there, spammers DONT USE THEIR OWN MONEY. That Pluto scam that everyone is talking about is a perfect example. The spammers will simply use stolen credit cards to "pay" for the spam they send out. The end result will be just as much spam as there is now, except WE will now be paying to use email. Its a terrible, terrible idea that will never work and should'nt ever be implemented. I do think the idea behind it is good, but the reality falls way short.....

A week of prison time is not nearly enough of a deterrent,
IMO. And the fines ought to be at least 10 times what
you said.

To most spammers, a $10,000, $50,000 or even $150,000
fine is only a slap on the wrist.

Well, at least it would put off any start up businesses.

I say fight back with DEA's..

after all if we flood the system with trash, what is left..

I figured it out one night, I can create 5000 DEA (@yahoo.com) addresses via 10 sbcglobal.net accounts.

I agree with you there Karl, but not with this current administration or Congress. They are too pro corporate to do anything that would help the citizens they represent. It is funny how citizens are the ones who vote for them yet it is corporations they cater to. But that is an argument for another time.

The real solution is to just scrap SMTP all together and come up with a new protocol. SMTP wasn't designed for the Internet as it is today and SPAM will never go away with this protocol. It will only get worse and worse until email collapses on itself and becomes totally useless. I for one do not want to pay for any email because i am already paying with my monthly check to my ISP for it. Why should i have to pay again? I would love just 5 minutes alone with a spammer in a locked room with a baseball bat. They would be sorry they ever learned how to use a computer.

OMG! 2 funny! LOL!

i guess you have enough money to buy me a house and pay for my utilities and broadband for the rest of my life.

It's a tax write-off, and I get way more advertisements than bills. Ever notice the "No postal fee is shipped within the U.S." because it's not just for return postcards and envelopes.This is an age old position that will never work. What about mailing lists? What about e-mail internal to a company? Should e-mail to my co-workers outside the US pay more for their e-mails? This is a management nightmare waiting to happen.Everyone thinks their e-mail is legit; the bad ones get sent to the e-mail "postmaster".

The solution to the problem is to prosecute the top spammers and have ISPs become for proactive (about fighting spam). The FBI and ISPs already know who are the top spammers, and they already know where a majority of them live (hint: USA, and in particular Florida). Regardless of how these guys generate, via re-mailers through China or S. Korea or wherever, most of the big spammers reside here in the states. They also didn't need the CAN SPAM Act to prosecute these bastards--the USA PATRIOT already had the necessary provisions (hint: purposely making a network "unreliable").

Their was an excellent article from the AOL Postmaster Carl Hutzler on how to stop spam. Yes, the same AOL who use to be a spamming nightmare 5-10 years ago is presently doing their best to clean up their act and spam in general.