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more on anti-spam legislation
``` [I keep forgetting why we invented computers. It turns out the reason is to make movies like "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". It's the movie they would have made the first time if the computers had been big enough. The dinosaurs are brilliant and the people are EXTREMELY STUPID: soft-headed environmentalist stupidity versus heavily-capitalized corporate stupidity. Typical dialogue: "Are you out of your mind?!", and then the dinos attack. That's the plot. Plus Steven Spielberg gets eaten by a tyrannosaurus rex. Switching to a completely unrelated subject, I have enclosed the latest on the anti-spam bills in Congress. The House bill, which is supported by CAUCE, is much preferable to the Senate bill I sent out the other day because it places the main burden on the spammers, not the ISP's. I note that the Senate bill provides an opt-out for online advertising (meaning that an individual has to take an action to stop receiving advertisements, as opposed to taking an action to start receiving them) and not, like the House bill, an opt-in. By making the ISP's provide the opt-out, though, it does create an incentive for making the opt-out easy to use, which is the usual problem with opt-out provisions. The problem, of course, is there's no reason why ISP's should carry that burden. Although I suspect that the issue hasn't matured enough either conceptually or politically to produce legislation right now, this would be a good time to contact your elected representatives to raise their awareness of the issue. EFF says it will probably oppose both bills on free-speech grounds among other things, and I respect their opinion even though I probably don't share it. What needs to happen right now, in my view, is that somebody who can write large documents and knows how to operate a telephone should talk to all of the players on both the legal and technical side of the anti-spam movement and collect all of the issues, options, and opinions in one place.]
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Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:47:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Stanton McCandlish
Though EFF's not sworn everlasting enmity to all Net regulation (for example we welcome the FTC's involvement in catching online frauds), we are likely to be opposing this legislation for various reasons. We are committed to helping fix the spam problem and will soon be convening a working group to examine various technical, social, legal, and legislative possibilities. But the two bills before the US Congress to deal with spam both appear to have constitutional difficulties, technical and logical problem and other fatal errors, and are unlikely to solve the problem anyway. It may be better for legislation to resolve particular micro-issues like whether or not an ISP contract holding spamming users liable for damage caused by irate recipients who send revenge mailbomb, is a valid contract, for example (assuming the lawyers conclude that this is not a valid contract right now, which is an entirely hypothetical condition). Despite CAUCE's optimism that the Smith legislation, which simply amends the junk fax law to ban online spamming (of one kind), will fix the problem for the most part, we believe that passage of either bill will simply cause spammers to dig in their heels and work through foreign helpers and ISPs, since (again despite CAUCE's opinion) a large number of users never bother to look at where an online business is actually located before handing over a credit card number.
In short, we don't think a bill in one jurisdiction is going to solve the spamming problem alone, and that it is highly likely to make it worse if done w/o "backup" from other strategies like NSP-ISP contracts, user class action suits, public education campaigns, techincal fixes to spam-enabling security problems, etc.
We'd be interested in hearing from any ISPs, NSPs, and online businesses who'd like to work with us on legal, technical and social solutions to the larger spamming problem.
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Stanton McCandlish mech@eff.org Electronic Frontier Foundation, Program Director http://www.eff.org/~mech +1 415 436 9333 Are YOU an EFF member? http://www.eff.org/join
Date: Fri, 23 May 97 14:51:23 -0400
From: Ray Everett-Church
[...]
Senator Murkowski's bill, supported by the Direct Marketing Association, Cyber Promotions, and others, does several things:
It is a tagging scheme enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. It requires "Advertisement" as the first word of the Subject line.
It imposes requirements on ISPs, including:
The Internet Service Providers Consortium
[I've edited the following a little. -- PA]
You can read more about the Smith bill
at:
Hope this information is helpful.
-Ray
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Ray Everett-Church
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Help outlaw "spam"
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[Now here is the Smith bill, from www.cauce.org]
Bill Introduction Statement for the Record 'Legalistic' line numbering omitted.
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105th Congress 1st SESSION H.R. ___________
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IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr Smith of New Jersey introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on __________________.
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A BILL To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to ban the transmission of unsolicited advertisements by electronic mail,and to require that sender identification information be included with electronic mail messages.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This act may be cited as the "Netizens Protection Act of 1997".
SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON TRANSMISSION OF UNSOLICITED ADVERTISEMENTS BY ELECTRONIC MAIL
Section 227(b)(1) of the Communications act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 227(b)(1))is amended--
(1) by striking "or" at the end of subparagraph (C); (2) by redesignating subparagraph (D) as subparagraph (E); (3) by inserting after subparagraph (C) the following new subparagraph: "(D) to use any computer or other electronic device to send an unsolicited advertisement to an electronic mail address of an individual with whom such person lacks a preexisting and ongoing business or personal relationship unless said individual provides express invitation or consent/permission; or".
SEC. 3. ELECTRONIC MAIL SENDER IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION REQUIRED.
Section 227(d)(1) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 227(d)(1)) is amended--
(1) by striking "or" at the end of subparagraph (A); (2) by stiking the period at the end of subparagraph (B) and inserting "; and" and (3) by inserting at the end the following new subparagraph:
"(C) to use a computer or other electronic device to send an unsolicited advertisement to an electronic mail address unless such person clearly provides, at the beginning of such unsolicited advertisement, the date and time the message was sent, the identity of the business, other entity, or individual sending the message, and the return electronic mail address of such business, other entity, or individual." ```
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