[IP] more on The new Federal Anti-Spam Law

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+@ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:07:24 -0500
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>
Subject: Re: [IP] The new Federal Anti-Spam Law
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>


On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 02:31:47PM -0500, Dave Farber quoted:
> Congress voted on the new Federal anti-spam law last night.

It's not an anti-spam law.

It's a legalize-mainsleaze-spam law -- which is hardly surprising,
given that it was largely designed and written by mainsleaze spammers.
The entire purpose of this bill is to redefine a subset of spam as
not-spam -- the "that-we-which-we-not-do" scam that I referred
to in a message earlier this week.

I'm sure the DMA, one of the most consistent and staunch advocates
of spam, is ecstatic.  They couldn't have hoped for better.

The net effect of this law will be to assist mainsleaze spammers
-- like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and others -- in wiping out
the competition from what are often termed "chickenboners": the
porn spammers, stock pump-n-dumpers, pill spammers, and so on.
The DMA's lobbyists rushed to have this law passed in part in
order to pre-empt the much more restrictive (but still largely
ineffective) California law which goes into effect 1/1/2004.

This is a HUGE victory for spammers: the end result for
Internet users will be even more spam from even more sources.

---Rsk 

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