Supreme Court: Complying With CANSPAM Doesn't Outlaw Filters
from the a-bit-slow-on-the-uptake dept
We've been following the case in Texas, where a dating site that was spamming UT students kept insisting that because they complied with CAN-SPAM, it was illegal to filter them. In their misreading of the law, they literally thought that CAN-SPAM was set to specifically force people to accept their spam. That's a pretty ridiculous read on the law, and the court told them so. Rather than believing it, though, the spamming site appealed and quickly lost. Not willing to take no for an answer (a trait found in many spammers), they appealed to the Supreme Court, who wisely declined to take the case. So, now we can say with some sense of finality that nowhere in CAN-SPAM does it allow spammers to spam you unconditionally. You still have every right to use a filter to block spam out -- even if it complies with the law.
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Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam and eggs
It's not all about the users. It's about the e-mail service providers (notmail, aoloser, yahell, etc.) and corporations that have to find disk space, CPU cycles and bandwidth to process those bazillion spams.
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Court's decision not to hear a case
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I believe....
The saddest thing is that most spam companies believe that they are legitimate advertising companies, and they can't understand why other people (not their company) would send unsolicited email to people who probably don't give a rats butt about their product. These companies don't understand what they are doing wrong, and don't want to understand.
I will get down off my soap box now before I start screaming and jumping up and down. It could happen at any moment
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Re: I believe....
The hypocrisy in this is that I guarantee you that every spammer uses spam filters or shields their personal email address as well.. You know, so they don't get spammed.
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No Subject Given
No, that doesn't make it right, but bitching about spam is like bitching about having to lock the doors to your home and car.
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Re: No Subject Given
I think people resent having to purchase and set up anti-spam tools (households don't have sysadmins, though one should hope their ISPs have some efforts in place to help them) and like Mike said a few weeks past - all this security crap ends up acting like a security tax on the internet. I guess you just have to take the good with the bad, though personally I would sooner punch anyone who purchases something through spam square in the head rather than try and hunt down spammers.
It's simple, really. Spammers spam because they get money for it. Companies pay to send out spam because it generates sales.
Not sure I really like the locking your car analogy - if someone were trying my doorknobs several times a day I think I'd evoke a much stronger reaction than if (as far as I'm concerned) it never happens.
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Re: No Subject Given
I would like to know what moron is buying illegal hair tonic from spammers in Mexico (which probably gives them a dribbling problem after urinating...anyone watch Penn and Teller's Bulls***?). Why would you buy a product from someone who came by your personal information by suspicious means? It's the same thing with telemarketers....it's some guy (or gal) you don't know peddling crap off on you that no one else wants. I don't care how attractive it sounds, it's retarded.
The saddest part is that if someone were to do a poll, no one would ever admit to buying something from a spam email. Someone has though, and that someone is [explicitive deleted] it up for the rest of us.
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Re: No Subject Given
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Filters legal...that's a no brainer
On the topic of spam and ISP's however, not many seem to care. Many of them seem to be incapable of taking very simple and free steps to fight spam. One of the ways that ISP's and businesses can fight against spam is to use an SPF record. An SPF record identifies the mail servers for a domain in DNS. If a mail comes in saying it's from yourdomain.com, but the IP of the sending server is not a mail server for yourdomain.com it gets denied. It's an open standard and it's free (just add a record to DNS). I don't know about anyone else, but most of my spam woes would be gotten rid of if ISP's and businesses would implement SPF records.
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