Anti-Spam Legislation Doesn't Work, But Apparently Canada Needs It Anyway
from the but-why? dept
It's been pretty clear for quite some time that anti-spam legislation hasn't done a damn thing to stop spam, so it's not exactly clear why folks up in Canada feel that the government is missing out by not having a useless Canadian version of anti-spam legislation. Apparently, people are worried that Canada is becoming a spam and scam haven, but it's not really clear that that's true. The same article also calls for stricter identity theft laws in Canada, noting that very few identity thieves are prosecuted in Canada -- though it fails to note that the real reason is that it's quite difficult to catch identity thieves (which is true whether or not the laws are strict). While it's nice that people are realizing that spam and identity theft are serious problems, it's important to realize that simply outlawing them may not do much to stop them and often are really only useful in making politicians feel good.
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I am Jack
If Canada's anti-spam legislation is anything like ours, then the reason they need it so they too can legalize spam. After all, the politicians can't use spam to get the vote out if they haven't first legalized it.
That's very important...
/ignorance
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Spam, Lovely Spam!
But, it doesn't stop the spammers.
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Why not?
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Bulk email is not spam
There are two parts to spam:
1. Bulk mail.
2. Fake sender address.
Bulk mail should *not* be illegal, it's very easy to block because the sender is listed and a filter list can remove them if the user wants.
US and Canadian companies shouldn't be terrified of going to jail for sending out and advert!
Fake Senders, should be a crime, since it it deception, impersonation of another person, and it makes it damn difficult to block the emails (which is why they do it)!
But the laws don't work, I'd like to see an SPF record compulsorily part of the DNS record for every server. So that fake senders can all be discarded.
Trouble is Microsoft owns hotmail and wants to charge for it's users to receive bulk email, so they lobby for these crappy laws while good fixes already exist.
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another waste of time
anti-spammers are well aware that the primary purpose of
anti-spam legislation is to carefully exempt large categories
of spam from the legal definition, so that those sending it can
use the feeble spam-is-that-which-we-do-not-do excuse.
See:
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/that-which-we-dont.html
Those categories often include political spam, religious spam,
and all spam sent by large commercial spammers who have made
campaign contributions and employed lobbyists. A prime example,
of course, is the US "CAN-SPAM" law, yet another illustration
that the US Congress is one of the most technically ignorant
legislative bodies to be found anywhere on planet Earth.
The best anti-spam tool available is a good blacklist. I strongly
encourage the use of those operated by spamhaus.org, njabl.org,
dsbl.org, sorbs.net and tqmcube.com, among others.
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And... so?
And if they do prosecute overseas spammers, how are they going to collect fines or enforce the judgment? So the Chinese spammer has been found guilty. Will he actually be put in jail or will his punishment be to be deported back to China, where he'll send some more spam?
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Spam Capital?
Sincerely,
Spammed King of Canada
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NZ gets in on the action
http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/TechnologyNews/tabid/189/articleID/22124/Default.aspx
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A timely example of that-which-we-do-not-do -- rig
This is wrong, of course, which is one of the reasons why it's
covered in the URL provided in my previous comment. The
correct definition of spam is "unsolicited bulk email", or UBE
for short. That definition was settled on many years ago -- which
is when the slan term "spam", borrowed from Usenet, which in turn
had borrowed it from MUDs, was applied. UBE replaced earlier
terms such as "mass mail abuse" and "broadcast mail" and so on.
The definition (UBE) deliberately omits any number of qualifying
terms (such as "forged sender address") because including them would
allow spammers to claim that their particular variety of spam wasn't
spam -- because it didn't meet some particular criteria. The definition
of spam is also deliberately content-neutral (for example, empty spam
is still spam) because it's the act of spamming that is itself abusive.
(And because it's undesirable and unnecessary to get into content issues.)
This is not, by the way, to say that content might introduce *more*
abuse: for example, the content might be a phish or a virus, both of
which are abusive even when sent by non-spamming means. It's
just an example I'm using to point out that UBE was carefully chosen,
and, as subsequent events have shown, has held up very well over
the years. As yet, I see no reason to even consider changing it.
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Blacklist, filter, delete
You cannot punish spammers, get over it and find something woirhtwhile to do.
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Follow the money
We'll never shut down the Nigerian frauds by anit-spam legilslation but that is no reason for not shutting down what we can.
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