After reading your description of Swedish society, I think maybe it would be
better not to write any spam legislation at all!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jacob Palme" <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se>
To: "IETF general mailing list" <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 11:28
Subject: Re: Why spam is a problem.
At 13:55 -0500 02-08-13, 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]
At 21:09 -0700 02-08-13, Dave Crocker wrote:
how does this help with the massive amount of international spam?
As a basis for discussion of anti-spam legislation, here
is a description of how the Swedish government treated
commercial radio in the 1970s. (At that time, commercial
radio was forbidden in Sweden. Now, it is permitted,
but the interesting thing is not what they wanted to
forbid, but how they tried to do it.)
It all started when several ships on international
water outside Sweden began sending commercial around-
the-clock music.
The Swedish government then made a law saying that
such broadcast was illegal, and that if such a boat
came into Swedish waters, it would be seized. They
also forbade radio telephone to this boat. (In both
cases with exception for emergency calamities.)
This law did *not* work.
The Swedish goverment then changed the law saying
that any Swede who paid for an advertisment or earned
money by co-working with such radio stations would
be illegal. This worked!
My conclusion is that if the government wants to
stop spamming, it has to write a law saying that
"any citizen who earns money from spam, or who
is selling products or services through spam,
is illegal. Even if the actual sending of the spam,
and the company paying for the spam, is in another
country.
--
Jacob Palme <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/