Should spam be illegal?

Great Debates
1

I get hundreds of email messages a day from mailing lists, so spam has never really been bothersome, but recently I’ve received a rash of opt-out messages telling me that unless I specifically respond to remove myself, they will assume that I wish to continue receiving 3-5 messages per week!

I know their have been attempts to curb it legally, but the questions remains: Is it an appropriate target for legislation?

Pros: It’s a public nuisance. It’s theft of resources. It’s solicitation on private property. There is no incentive to ever stop sending to a particular address (unlike postal mail and telemarketing which are not free).

Cons: It’s incredibly difficult to enforce. It’s a blow against general freedom. It’s more likely to stop reputable small-scale (one-time) advertisers than the worst offenders.

So… should spam be outlawed? And if so, does anyone have any brilliant ideas for enforcement?

2

I don’t want to delve into the legalities of it, but for the record, I HATE IT!!!

That said, I think that the ‘spam blocking’ utilities on most e-mail is a good suggestion. The one I have on my account let’s me recieve only messages from people on my list. Works for me!

The most rewarding part was when I got my money!
-Dr. Nick Riviera

3

I think that sending any e-mail with anonymous headers should be illegal, whether it’s Spam or whatever.

All e-mail should be easily trackable, IMHO. There is no reason to have an untrackable e-mail, unless you are up to no good at worst, or even at best, are just being a nuisance.

Yer pal,
Satan

4

Direct mail to targeted audiences is a longstanding valid marketing technique. And I’m fairly sure that all of us have become aware of things we do want from such schemes, albeit that such “desirable” mailings are only a small percentage of the junk mail we receive.

IMHO, spam should not be made illegal but subject to the same sort of restrictions that bulk mail is. First, there should be an industry standard for a lower priority, and spam should be required to be sent at that lower priority. Mail server ISP setup should be such as to pass the non-spam higher priority mail first and then such spam as the box can receive. And there should be a means to require one not be spammed and make that enforceable, perhaps through a common site where one could electronically set categories of I-don’t-want-this (or universally).

Finally, what Satan said about anonymity should be binding. While there may be valid reasons for an individual to have an anonymous e-mail site, sending spam from one should be prohibited, with fairly stringent penalties.

5

Personally, I don’t find Spam® that bad. Run it through a meat grinder, add some Miracle Whip® and some sweet pickle relish and voila! Spam salad! Be sure you serve it on white bread, because it’s not as good on (my usual) wheat. Believe it or not, it tastes batter than ham salad.

6

Isn’t it illegal to send unsolicited ads via FAX? Since this precedent has been set, I see no reason why it couldn’t also be applied to email.

I do realize it’s more of a problem with the FAX, though, since a message ties up the machine for a long period of time, and blocks it’s use. This isn’t quite the case for email spam.

7

I’m with Polycarp on this one. The argument that spam ties up system resources is disingenuous–with a SMTP (plain text) email proge a one-page spam is chump change for the user. And I can either filter the crap out or (god forbid!) delete it with a click. I can even (gasp) delete a whole bunch with a single click! And I also have several email addresses, one of which is dedicated entirely to spam. Makes my life much easier.

I’d much rather make bulk snail mail illegal. Electrons are a renewable resource at least, and don’t clutter up landfills.

'Course, that said, I also agree with Brian about anonymous headers. When I get snail mail, I can (usually) tell where it came from. I want to be able to do the same with junk email.

But make spam illegal? Absolutely not.

-andros-

8

On general principles, I’d oppose outlawing it, but the more of these “opt-out” messages I get, the more I waver.

Tell me, have you ever received a snail mail flyer saying “If you don’t return this postcard, we will assume that you want to get 5 mailings from us every week.”? It wouldn’t be viable, since they’d have to pay postage for the whole pyramid of unwanted mailings.

<paranoia> But it seems that spam is like entropy, it only increases! Perhaps these messages are idle threats, but it seems that if I don’t respond, I will start getting 3-5 times as much weekly spam, which will of course lead other spammers to decide I’m too lazy to opt out and put me on their own lists. How long until my poor inbox looks like an alt.* newsgroup? </paranoia>

I don’t mind the occasional “LASER PRINTER TONER” ad, or get-rich-quick scheme. What I really resent are the threats that try to force me to do something to avoid inundation (and the wondering whether by acting to remove myself, I’m actually labelling my address as active).

As an experiment, every time I receive one of these links to an ‘unsubscribe’ page, I’ve started entering in <name-of-spammer>@<my-domain> and routing incoming mail for these addresses to a special bin. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see shortly whether my paranoid delusions are really so paranoid. :smiley:

Then again, without spam, I would have nearly so many ways to waste time!

9

ack… that should be “started entering in SPAMMER_NAME@MY_DOMAIN.com”.

Hehe… rereading my message though, I start to see what a paranoid conspiracy theorist I’ve become. Maybe I should just take an axe to my computer and retire to my bomb shelter in the woods once and for all!

10

Yes,and also liver

11

It should cost any ISP $5000 for each individual incident of email being forwarded through their mailer without punching in an accurate record of where the ISP’s mail processor received it from.

That would result in full mail-forwarding paths going back to the point of actual origin of the offending email.

Then anyone sending unsolicited email after being asked to stop should be subject to arrest and prosecution for harassment; anyone sending more than one piece of unsolicited email without a valid Reply-To or From header to the same email address should be treated as if they had been asked to stop after the first piece was sent.

ISPs that permit accounts to remain in use after repeated harassment convictions should be denied the right to operate.

Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post

12

There is one big difference between snailmail ads and email. With snailmail, the cost is born almost entirely by the sender. With email, the cost is born almost entirely by the receiver.

This may seem like a trivial thing, given that the cost of a single email (or usenet post - a closely related problem) is negligible. But when spam becomes a large fraction of the total traffic, as has happened on usenet, problems arise. Disk space and bandwidth is not free, and the usefulness of the medium is deteriorated. To have a full usenet feed currently requires about 3 T1’s dedicated to the task, and a positively enourmous about of disk space unless you expire in mere hours. The prevalence of spam has forced most ISP’s to shorten the expiration time on many groups and to only accept a subset of the total feed, or else spend money on more system resources to deal with it, which gets passed along to the customer. This doesn’t even take into account that a formerly useful resource is bordering on the useless, and spam can cause valid content to be dropped.

The situation isn’t yet that bad with email, but to some degree this is only because people are actively fighting the problem. It turns out that there are no freedom of speech issues in spam prevention, because the resources are privately owned. Any old ISP who owns their own systems is free to regulate what they do or do not wish to store on those systems. Services such as email and usenet are cooperative by nature, and freedom of speech doesn’t mean you get to use somebody else’s printing press to send you message with.

However, I disagree with something stated earlier in the thread, that anonymity should be prohibited. I think there are valid reasons for sometimes being anonymous. Anonymous participation in untrusted mailing lists such as those for alcoholics or victims of domestic violence, whistleblowing, and so on, I see as valid uses of anonymous email. I think any measure that addresses the spam problem should keep these sorts of things in mind, and in any case, as a practical matter it’s almost impossible to avoid the possibility of anonymity without extending SMTP or inventing a new protocol for the purpose.

I’ve had two “non-disposable” email addresses thus far: one from '83 to '86, and another from '87 to present. I’ve been reasonably careful with the later (the former predated spam, so it wasn’t an issue), and I currently use a hotmail “disposable” email account when I sign up for things that are going to make my email address public. But unfortunately, web based drop-boxes like that didn’t exist when I obtained that addresses, so it does get routinely spammed even though it hasn’t been used publicly for many years, and my spam filters nuke about 95% of the stuff :-(. This annoys me greatly. I’m actually considering changing it, only giving the new one to a few friends, and using disposable accounts for everything else.

–
peas on earth

13

I wrote, “I’ve had two ‘non-disposable’ email addresses thus far”… come to think of it, that’s probably not true. There were two email accounts, but somewhere along the line, the address changed from a UUCP style one to a DNS style one. But it’s a bit comical (in a nerdish sort of way) to consider someone trying to spam my UUCP style email address.

–
peas on earth

14

You’re right, bantmof. I’m an end-user in the email realm, and didn’t think about usenet or other big-time mail servers. I know it’s a problem with them, I just manage to forget about it since spam is such a small part of my life as a desktop mailer.

How about a combination of legislation which would ensure A) full headers from origin to recipient, and B) the ability to truly opt out (which has been proposed, IIRC)? that work?

-andros-

15

Spam hasn’t bothered me too much; yet I’d just as soon avoid it.

What I really hate, though, are those “mouse traps” that won’t let you go. I’ve found that Spam often includes those annoyances, and that makes yet another reason I auto-delete any email I’m not expecting or don’t recognize.

16

Spam, spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam. Lovely spam, wonderful spam. Lovely spam, wonderful spam.

The trouble with Sir Launcelot is by the time he comes riding up, you’ve already married King Arthur.

17

What are you talking about?

Something else that I considered absurd was at the end of one piece of spam, it said “If you would like to be taken off our list, click here.” Yeah, right. Like my e-mail program supports html.

I don’t think that we can really intelligently discuss whether or not to outlaw “spam” because it is such a imprecise term. Does it mean off-topic postings (a la general questions in Comments On Cecil’s Columns)? Does it mean commercially oriented messages? Does it mean mass mailings? We need to isolate specific “spamish” activities, and then discuss whether they should be illegal. Some possible regulations:
-Each message must have a label stating how many other people have been sent it. Manipulating this label would be illegal.
-Anonymous e-mail must be prominently labeled “anonymous”.
-In order to send someone an e-mail, you must have had some other contact with them (not sure how this would work, but I think it’s worth thinking about).
-You could be allowed to “copyright” your e-mail address. Anyone that told anyone else your e-mail address without your permission could be sued for copyright violation.

These are all preliminary suggestion. Don’t expect me to defend them!

Yes, I suppose that if you expire in a few hours, you won’t have to worry about spam :).

18

Without rationalizing or justifying my opinion to the masses I would just like to say that yes, of course spam should be illegal.

19

I’ll have the spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, and spam.

20

It actually does have a precise definition. On usenet, spam is any message with a Breidbart index > 20 (IIRC). The Breidbart index is computed by the sum over the number of identical postings of the squareroot of the crosspost count. The definition is thus content neutral.

In email, there are a few classes of things referred to as “spam”, but UBE is, to a first approximation, the entire problem. I think there are some quantitative definitions here too, but I can’t remember what they are off hand.

It’s a good idea, but unfortunately hard to really accomplish. Even today, most UBE is sent multiple times, once to each recipient, instead of to multiple recipients per message. Headers can be trivially faked, and legislative solutions are pretty hard to do accomplish, just because there are so many different countries involved, and enforcement is close to impossible anyway.

Spam is definately not an easy problem to fix. If a system can be abused, it will be. I think the best current approach is to bring pressure against ISPs who are allowing abuse from their domains to continue unchecked. But even that is often difficult to do.

Be careful of this sort of thing even if you can click on it! People who send UBE are generally unscrupulous; they use your reply (or visit to a web page) as a confirmation that your email address is in fact valid. People have tested this with “virgin” email addresses which have never done anything but reply to the “remove” address. These then end up on a zillion different bulk email lists. “Remove” replies are just another way for them to harvest valid email addresses.

–
peas on earth