Re: spam

At 02:17 PM 5/26/2003 -0400, S Woodside wrote:


> On Monday, May 26, 2003, at 08:58  AM, Lloyd Wood wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 25 May 2003, S Woodside wrote:
> >
> > > Good law could work to curtail spam. Spammers do it because it's
> > > profitable. Remove the profit, fine the dickens out of the worst
> > > transgressors, and the cost/benefit ratio will sink. Spamming isn't
> > > like hacking, there is always a way to trace back to the person who is
> > > paying for the spam because they must be able to sell their product.
> > > Since you can identify the individuals responsible, you can hold them
> > > accountable with the right laws in place.
> > and this has worked so well with the War on Drugs.
> The internet is not the street. Someone is selling a product. In order to 
> sell a product you must be able to reach them. If you can reach them, you 
> can find a way to deal with them legally.
Excellent point .. at the FTC Workshop on SPAM this was pointed out in 
considerable detail. FTC staff randomly looked at about 2000 spam messages 
collected internally from FTC mail servers and were able to identify that 
80% of the SPAM contained phone numbers addresses or other contact data 
that could be traced to and individual or business domiciled in the United 
States.
That the mail was set off shore was not the issue... you attack the problem 
at its source ..the business that use SPAM.  Follow the money!
ON that basis they were able to conclude that with sufficient enforcement 
resources the FTC could track down these people rather easily. Conclusion a 
good law , including private right of action, written well, backed by 
sufficient resources at both the state and federal level can work.
We can never eliminate SPAM only make it a manageable problem ..just like 
we saw in the case of junk-fax. I can never understand why folks cannot 
look back at that legislation and see the parallels to SPAM and the successes.


> simon

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Richard Shockey, Senior Manager, Strategic Technology Initiatives
NeuStar Inc.
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