The sort of law you suggest isn't hard conceptually. Would be easy to
legislate. But might be real hard to enforce because the proof might be
tough, if you can't get the foreign e-mail sending person to be a witness,
since you'd need to prove the domestic customer asked for the spam to be
sent (and in the US you have a right to be confronted with the witnesses
against you). Not sure a DA or an AUSA would be willing (or wise) to try
the case on the e-mail alone. Nor, I'd guess, would many prosecutors think
it was worth the $$$ to fly in a foreign witness for this case. So in
practice it may collapse to the original problem. Caveat: I've never been
a prosecutor, so this is speculative.
[more below]
On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Eric A. Hall wrote:
This is where spam laws would have to deviate from the existing junk fax
laws. While the latter targets the senders, the former would have to
target the beneficiary. EG, if the spam comes from Russia but the
beneficiary is stateside, the beneficiary should get penalized based on
that fact alone. [yes this is US-centric, substitute accordingly]
Another more insidious bowl of noodles is dealing with joe-jobs
Same issues, really. Actually easier in one way, since there's forgery or
misreprentaton involved. Might not even need new legislation. But again
there's jurisdiction and resource constraints. And to the extent the spam
actually promotes the victim, proof may be harder (when the actual mailer
can't be offered immunity to testify as one might to an employed
intermediary, since s/he's the bad guy).
Of course, this raises the question whether one would rather zing the
customer or the enabler.
PS. By "joe-jobs" do we mean any sending of spam purporting to be from a
3rd party victim? Or just spam that genuinely promotes the victim's web
site even though the victim/"beneficiary" had nothing to do with it?
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