The Can Spam Debate Continues... As Does The Spam
from the spam-spam-spam-spam-spam-spam dept
Earlier today we reported how the US has now legalized spam, and now the debate continues. Ray Everett-Church has an opinion piece explaining that the law is called "Can Spam" because it teaches spammers how they can spam. He points out that it's basically an outline of all the loopholes that will make it possible for our in-boxes to become even more crowded with junk than usual. Meanwhile, the sponsors of the bill have fired back against all the critics, saying that it's a good first step. They pretty much ignore the point about legalized spam from direct marketers, insisting (against popular perception) that spam is only spam if it's somehow fraudulent. They also leave themselves a nice loophole if it doesn't turn out to work - saying that it will only work "with proper enforcement." So, now, when we end up with more spam than ever, they'll just say the government needs more money to go after spammers. How about the spammers themselves? Well, they're not saying much, but they are still spamming. It turns out that last month they took a break from all that porn spam to focus on "health care" spam (at least, that's what they call bogus diet pills, bogus Viagra and bogus... enhancement pills).
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any lawyers out there?
This stuff is over my head but this item of the bill seems bad...
(C) header information shall be considered materially misleading if it fails to identify accurately a protected computer used to initiate the message because the person initiating the message knowingly uses another protected computer to relay or retransmit the message for purposes of disguising its origin.
from http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html
I know they are talking about open relays, but is it vague enough to also mean remailers, anonymous mailers and disposable email services such as Sneakemail.com are now illegal. And if this isnt defined carefully does it mean spammers can use this law to harass such services? And what does this mean for anonymous free speech?
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Read and Weep
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