spam legislation

General discussion re sg.

spam legislation

Postby josh » Wed Sep 29, 2004 5:18 pm

This isn't really on topic, but I just started working in a spam legislation drafting committee (this would be US state legislation). Selfishly, I want to make sure that the legislation doesn't make spamgourmet illegal (sg changes headers a little), but more generally I'd like make a meaninful contribution to the effort.

Since a lot of us on this board tend to care about this sort of thing, what are your thoughts?
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Postby SysKoll » Thu Sep 30, 2004 2:22 am

Want to fight spam? Have a small number of detectives buy things from illegal spam with special credit cards that are actually traced by credit agencies (and no, don't make all these cards have a special prefix or something easy to spot like this). Whenever the spammer gets the money, the detectives know where it is, and wham, one less spammer.

This would of course work only for US spammers, but it turns out that the US is the largest producer of spam.
-- SysKoll
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Legislative goals?

Postby Paul » Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:31 am

Does the drafting committee have a view of the goals of any legislation? For example, are they trying to support the identification of spam, or of spammers? Would they want to get into legislating protocols (not recommended), or broadly-defined behaviours (e.g. along the lines of telecommunications fraud, for any spam travelling over a telephone wire such as for DSL and dialup connections)?
Paul
 

detectives

Postby Jim » Wed Dec 15, 2004 5:43 am

I like SysKoll's idea. He doesn't say how that would be one less spammer.

I don't see why a special credit card is needed. The product has to come from somewhere. When I'm wasting time, I check the whois records.

The problem is that federal legislation is Can-Spam. Which means it is on a state by state basis. And even if it were federal, one must fight the spammer in a district which will take jurisdiction over him.

Once a huge team of lawyers is set up to go after them it wouldn't be difficult. Set up a few traps. Become an ISP. Collect spam. Seek draconian penalties from spammers. Call the newspaper. Serve the papers. Call the newspaper. Get the legal victory. Call the newspaper. Call the sheriff to sieze assets. Call the newspaper. Repeat until you are out of business.

The trick would be to manage the lawyers in a cost effective manner. Most spammers are just poor slobs trying desparately to eek out a living.

This two pronged approach is to have the media educate people into understanding that spending $149 for a million e-mails if one gets ten orders doesn't work if your marginal profit is $12.43. I personally believe the responce rate is worse than that now.

The second prong is to make it a financial disaster for spammers who have money. Some states have laws (can-spam doesn't pre-empt state laws) which do provide for draconian penalties. If the lawyers take a trailer from a mom who sent two thousand emails this will fail. If the lawyers seek justice against a spam shop operator sending two million e-mails a day it will work.

Remember that Al Capone was brought down by the IRS. Unsolicited Comercial E-mail is about money. Take the money, kill the business.

Anyhow, chew on that. It probably needs work.
Jim
 

Re: spam legislation

Postby Jim27106 » Sun Apr 14, 2013 6:37 am

I still think that is a reasonable idea. It occured to me that SG could collect a couple more pieces of data on the new user form:

1) What state (country) (Jurisdiction) do you live in?
2) Would you be willing to be contacted if we consider prosecuting spammers?

In that way if you ever lose you day job lawyering you can then see if this is worth pursing and you will have a database to start with.

Do I need to say I love this service?
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