At 7:49 PM -0700 4/3/03, Vernon Schryver wrote:
> From: Kee Hinckley <nazgul(_at_)somewhere(_dot_)com>
...
I assume not. Which is my point. It doesn't seem to me that
anti-forgery laws would have any significant impact on spam. Whether
or not I agree with your assertion that most spammers don't forge
now--it's clear that forging addresses is not necessary.
I claim that the anti-spam-forgery laws have already caused far less
spam to have forged sender addresses than a few years ago and instead
carry throw-away, drop-box addresses.
We've already discussed this, and we already know what simple
evidence will prove or disprove it. It's going to take someone at
Hotmail or Yahoo telling us which is more common--bounces to an
address that never existed. Or bounces to an address that they
cancel for spamming. Simple data. Simple proof. Until then, all I
know is that 1/3rd of all my bounces have MAIL FROM's which are
unresolveable. But until we have real data, can we please stop
arguing this in either direction? I didn't even disagree with you
here, and yet you insist on bring the argument up again.
As for cause and effect--forget it. I happen to believe that black
lists are no more effective against open relays than simply
complaining to open relay owners. But I'm not about to argue that,
because I have no evidence. There is no way to test cause and
effect, and we don't have any control cases to do a proper study.
I believe the main legal attack on the current spam problem
- will be a tax on commercial bulk mail of $0.01-$0.10/target.
Paid to whom? Doled out to ISPs and individual companies ala RIAA?
(Yes, I just saw someone on a private list propose this. And as much
as the thought disgusts me--the RIAA model might actually work.)
- criminal penalties for failing to pay the tax will end the majority
of current spam, while avoiding First Amendment challeges or
hurting the major advertisers.
End the majority of non-criminal, us-based spam, presumably. A quick
scan of the current contents of my junk folder indicates that such
laws would possibly reduce my spam by about 60%. Presumably it's not
going to do a thing for all the stuff in Chinese, or the 4-5 Nigerian
spams I get a day, or the credit card spams, or the off-shore
prescription drugs.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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