[SpamCop-List] Re: Can Spam Act of 2003

[John E. Malmberg]

In article <mailman.198.1075152044.20699.spamcop-list at news.spamcop.net>,
acoftil <gnn4ever at surewest.net> writes:
> Hello,
>
> I'm new to this list and may be in the wrong place.  I'm not new to SP....
>
> That is why I think I'm in the wrong place.  I wanted to get SP's attention to
> this new legislation.  But this thread seems to fit in with the new Federal
> law in the USA.
>
> I've been working with my Congressman's office on a major spam issue
> (Spam Cop has nothing to do with spam cell phone mail).  The local Sheriff
> is supposed to do a FULL investigation.  The Congressman's aide told me
> that the new Spam law will be administered by the Federal Trade Commission.
> I could not find any information on the FTC site, but I did find the full
> text of the new law (took effect January 1, 2004):
> http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html

The CAN-SPAM was rushed through Congress to overturn a real anti-spam
law passed in California that was to take effect Jan 1, 2004.

It was not passed to do anything about spam, except to try to convince you
that congress cared about it.  If they really cared about it, they would have
adopted the California law as a model.

If your congress person does not know that, they were not paying attention
to it when they voted.

There was plenty of input to congress on how bad the CAN-SPAM law was,
including an association of state attorney generals who urged Congress
to pass the California law instead.

How did your congressman vote and why?


That is why you are not finding anything about it's enforcement.

The law now bans practices that were illegal before it was passed, but not
well enforced, and now prevents private individuals from suing offenders.

The new law endorses opt-out spamming, which is very bad.  But that is what
the California law banned, and that specifically was what the CAN-SPAM act
was passed to make "LEGAL".

Now states that want to go after spammers can no longer pass laws to
go after spammers that hide behind shell corporations and pretend that
their OPT-OUT mechanism works.

Either your congress person new that when they voted, or they do not know
what was in that bill.


> It sure seems to me, that any system to catch spam and actually take some
> kind of action against the spammer should involve businesses such as Spam
> Cop.  Can you imagine an involved internet community and the government
> actually cooperating to reduce the amount of spam?

The CAN-SPAM law was written apparently to prohibit such private actions.

The CAN-SPAM law is a PRO-SPAM bill that direct marketers have been trying
to push through Congress for years.

The only thing that the marketers did not get is that it is still legal
for networks to refuse e-mail from networks that permit spam, regargless of
if the spam complies with the CAN-SPAM law.

> It also seems to me that providers could be held responsible if they do
> not act to reduce spam and to be responsive to spam reports.

That provision is missing from the CAN-SPAM law.

> Seems to me that there would be a national BL that every provider would
> be sent periodically by the FTC.  Looks too good to be true.  And it
> probably is, but I see it as progress.

The Federal Government does not need to be involved there.  The
Government reacts too slow for that to work.

What would help is getting the word out about how DNSbls work and why they
work.

Get the word out that if you are drowning in spam, it probably means that
your mail server operator is accepting e-mail from known compromised
machines, and most of that spam can be eliminated by DNSbls with out
risk of losing real mail.

Most likely they are accepting spam from known open proxies.

DNSbls are getting a lot of bad publicity in print, most of it undeserved.

> My biggest concerns are how to report spam with forged headers and how to
> identify when someone is impersonating someone else.  IOW, finding the
> accurate original source of the spam.  These are big issues on moderated
> news groups and I run two of them.

Newsgroups do not provide the header control that e-mail does.

> Obviously, there are many more details to be worked out.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
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