Only This Week Is It News That CAN SPAM Doesn't Work

from the politics-as-usual dept

Fri, Dec 29th 2006 2:07pm — Carlo Longino

As you might expect, news has been a tad slow this week. Slow enough, apparently, that the fact that the CAN SPAM law has done nothing to stop spam is regarded as news. It's been pretty clear from the outset that CAN SPAM was useless by every measure, except for giving politicians the ability to act like they'd done something. The fundamental problem with the law remains: all it does is legalize some spam, rather than actually doing anything to stop the torrent of unsolicited messages plaguing email users. It seems fairly clear that this isn't a problem that the government can actually handle. But politicians' meddling has just made the problem a bit worse by legitimizing plenty of spam. Of course, political grandstanding at the expense of simple things like progress -- that's not news, either.

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9 Comments

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steve, 29 Dec 2006 @ 3:53pm

Spam
I should forward all my 400 spams i get in a day to all the senators and congress man that passed this stupid bill.
its tough when you have the same email address for the past 10 years. it just keeps getting worse.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2006 @ 4:03pm

Re: Spam
I should forward all my 400 spams i get in a day to all the senators and congress man that passed this stupid bill.

I encourage you to find ways to scorn your USA representatives, however if you forward your spams, you'll only be blacklisted as a spammer by your ISP and forced to fill-out something like a challenge-response webpage every time you want to send ANY e-mail, legitimate or not. The anti-spam "filters" work in tandem with the anti-spam legislation to make the victim the enemy. It's an ugly scenario! I suggest we (USA) makes the Internet a State of its own, vote for our own EDUCATED representatives, and have them be the 51st state to balance the District of Columbia's non-voting area in the Senate for full political-rights status!
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Erik, 29 Dec 2006 @ 4:03pm

Solution
Here's the only answer: an elite team of techno-warriors travels to the bowels of Russia, Africa, and everywhere else spam originates. They hunt down the spammers, kill them, and post pictures of it on a website that will undoubtedly be quite popular and that will therefore use Google AdSense, which will in turn fund their covert operations. A good laugh will be had by all, and it won't make our taxes go up.
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OMAC, 29 Dec 2006 @ 5:34pm

The only thing that ever worked against the spammers was Blue Frog...RIP :(
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bignumone, 31 Dec 2006 @ 5:04am

How to stop spam
What if a movement started where people did not buy products advertised by SPAM from questionable retailers (make your penis 10" longer) AND everyone emailed reputable retailers that they are not buying their products for 1 month for every email they get. AND THEN STUCK TO IT!

Wouldn't retailers say, "Man, not only am I not getting anything from this, it is hurting me!"?

I know it is a bit naive, but something like that could work, couldn't it?
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Interested Buyer, 31 Dec 2006 @ 7:21am

Re: How to stop spam
ooooo, 10"...how much?
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Trashed, 31 Dec 2006 @ 8:44am

Re: How to stop spam
99 Percent of email spam is already ignored. It's the 1 percent of unsophisticated email users thateven read the stuff, and if just 1 percent of THEM respond to an ad, it was worth it to the spammer. After all, spam is FREE advertising, so 1 Billion spam ads cost $.0 to the spammer. The only way to stop this is to reinvent the email system to identify EVERYONE who uses it positively (there are ways to do this which still maintain annonymity) and allow all email users an "opt-out" option that will filter all un desired email. With all spammers positively identified, and an email system that is truly secured (i.e. impossible to spoof), spam can be eliminated. If somethiing is not done soon, the internet will be reguarded as safe only for closed encrypted systems that don't have the flexibility of full-fledged computers.
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Witty Nickname, 1 Jan 2007 @ 10:23am

While we are educating everyone not to reply to spam can we also teach them that forwarding an e-mail does not get them gift cards, money, a copy of Windows Vista, Good luck, God's love, 2 cents per e-mail to a girl whose dying wish was to start a chain letter, etc.....
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|333173|3|_||3, 1 Jan 2007 @ 6:33pm

Better than a 51st state
declare that the internet is not a part of any country, that national aws only apply tho that country's TLD (make the US stick to a .us TLD, so that .com etc are under direct ICTU/UN control, so no laws apply), then allow anyone to hunt down and trash the computer systems of spammers. AAlso get round the problems that Allof MP3 had, since no law would apply to .com
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