[IP] more on No, US antispam bill is not death to anonymity

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

I am at a total loss to see how one enforces this in a world wide Internet. 
Seems to me that it forces the off shore of the spam industry.  and does 
little to eliminate spam. Australia says 75% of their spam comes from 
China. How would this law help us again?

Dave

> Delivered-To: dfarber+@ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
> Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 01:24:35 +0000
> From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine)
> Subject: Re: [IP] No, US antispam bill is not death to anonymity
> To: dave@farber.net
> Cc:
>
> > This bill makes it a crime to use any false or misleading
> > information in a domain name or email account application, and then
> > send an email.  That would make a large fraction of hotmail users
> > instant criminals.
>
> If you actually read the text of the bill, you'll see that it makes it
> illegal to send commercial email or transactional mail ("we shipped
> your order" or "your account balance is $19.34") with false or
> misleading header information.  The only Hotmail users who this would
> make into criminals are the ones who sign up for accounts and send
> spam to make your body parts bigger.
>
> Anonymous advertising is an oxymoron.  The point of ads is to get
> people to buy stuff, so only makers or vendors of the stuff that's
> advertised have an interest in doing so, and if they can't find you,
> they can't to buy from you.  I suppose this would make "astroturf"
> fake grass-roots campaigns harder, but I can't get too upset about
> that.
>
> Anonymous mail that isn't commercial isn't affected at all.  Don't
> take my word for it, read the act.  It's not that long.
>
> There's plenty wrong with the CAN SPAM act, but let's worry about its
> real faults, not imagined ones.
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for 
> Dummies",
> Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer 
> Commissioner
> "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web

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