UK Government Too Busy Deleting Spam To Stop It
from the takes-time,-you-know? dept
We've pointed out that the UK anti-spam law has been nothing short of a complete failure, and now some folks in the UK government have explained why: in a somewhat testy response, a government official basically says they don't have time to fight spam and people should just shut up and delete it and everything will be fine (paraphrasing, obviously). There's nothing wrong with prioritizing, obviously. In fact, it's good that the government is at least recognizing it has some limited resources and should focus on doing what's most important with those resources. However, if that's the case, then don't bother passing useless laws with no teeth. Why did they even bother? If spam is a known problem, but the government doesn't have the resources to fight it, why not give individuals the right to go after spammers themselves or create some other system for fighting spam? Passing a law and then ignoring it because the government doesn't have the time or money just seems pointless.
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earning their keep
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Good Catch!
It's not very surprising, because the equivalent do-not-call telephone law had also lead to 0 prosecutions when I last checked (sorry I can't find a recent link).
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