Subject: writing congress about spam

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 10:53:31 -0700

> The spammers are destroying the usefulness of enormous amounts of
> wonderful infrastructure. Time for everyone to get on the phone with
> their congressman and ask them if they are interested in what 98% of
> the planet wants or what the Direct Marketing Association wants.

Ironically, if there is one body who has had to deal with large volumes 
of unsolicited mail for a very long time, it is Congress.  Indeed an 
industry has been formed around it, because much of the mail must be 
answered.  From my experience, these answers are actually quite funny, 
because they show very little relationship between the point I was 
raising and the point that they choose to make in their so-called 
response.  Of course, commercial software folk must claim at some level 
that my Congress person is just not using the latest and greatest.

Perhaps they need a variety of spam asssasin...

Eliot

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From: "Doug" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 19:00:40 -0400

Hey Eliot Lear,

NO NO NO and HELL NO. I despise Spam to the utmost degree and I regularly
refuse to buy items from people that advertise to me using Spam. On the
other hand I do not want someone telling me what I can and cannot receive in
my email or what I can and cannot send for that matter. I feel no need to
call my local congress man or woman over the contents of my inbox and really
hope that others do not as well because if we as a nation complain about
Spam enough and god forbid that we somehow get them to listen to us and do
something about it then we will be not only submitting to censorship and
oppression of things most of us agree are undesirable but also to the things
that the elite of the government find offensive. These things could include
anything that is counter to the mainstream religious beliefs and practices
and indeed anything that meets the least strict interpretation of
subversive. The censorship will not stop there indeed it will only grow
because by asking congress in one unanimous voice to censor our email we
will have admitted to the government that we are unable to handle the
information available to us on the internet and they will begin maneuvering
into a position to censor the information available to us on the internet as
well. The government already gathers information about what we look at and
what we put on the Internet let's not give them a reason or the ability to
take our right to know away from us. Instead I suggest we spend a little
more time and effort to developing new routines to filter out the Spam for
ourselves and boycotting the products and services whose providers choose to
use Spam to advertise to us.

Sincerely,

Doug

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From: Dan Wing <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 10:36:18 -0700

Doug,

Do you feel the FCC's existing rule against unsolicited faxes 
(title 47, chapter 5, subchapter II, section 227) censors or 
limits freedom of communication or expression, and should be 
repealed?

-d

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From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 23:56:52 -0400

>limits freedom of communication or expression, and should be

Ladies and Gentlemen I'm rather dismayed that I have not heard any rational 
response to the suggestion by my distinguished colleague Mr. Wing that the 
elements of Title 47 aka the junk fax laws could not be made applicable to 
unsolicited SMTP traffic. Many European Countries have similar laws.

Several of the US States have enacted decent laws banning SPAM, California 
in particular, but a national policy ..not under the control of the DMA 
could be modestly effective. Many of us who have had experience in 
fax  protocol development and deployment have first hand knowledge of this.

BTW there is a national effort underway in the US to stop unsolicited phone 
calls, just as if not more annoying than SPAM .... and yes even in an 
Republican administration here in the US.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html

Is there no faith at all in the power of rational laws enacted by rational 
people?

Has this bizarre libertarian streak in some completely blinded folks from 
the possibilities of government acting rationally?

Do you all think your vote or voice has no value in the public realm? Do 
you believe the process in the US and elsewhere is so totally corrupted by 
money there is no hope for competent technical views to reach elected 
decision makers?

Yes we can develop and deploy better filtering technology ..but that is not 
a panacea for the abuse we all must suffer through.

There is power in collective political action, after all who funded the 
development and deployment of TCP/IP in the first place...

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 00:09:01 -0400

> unsolicited SMTP traffic. Many European Countries have similar laws.

It's not just a matter of saying 'e-mail is legally fax', as
there's implications you need to chase down and deal with.  

In particular, I suggest that you also read 47 USC 227(d)(1)(B),
which states:

(d) Technical and procedural standards 
    (1) Prohibition 
         It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States - 
          (A) ....
          (B) to use a computer or other electronic device to send any 
              message via a telephone facsimile machine unless such person 
              clearly marks, in a margin at the top or bottom of each 
              transmitted page of the message or on the first page of the 
              transmission, the date and time it is sent and an 
              identification of the business, other entity, or individual 
              sending the message and the telephone number of the sending 
              machine or of such business, other entity, or individual. 

Be careful what you ask for, you may get it....

(Hint - was *your* e-mail stamped with the originating phone number at the
top of each page? ;)

For bonus points - what phone number should be used to fulfill the requirements
of 227(d)(1)(B) if it's an RFC2159 format email that never actually went
near a dialed telephone line?  Does your answer change any if I retrieve
said message via PPP over a dialup modem?

There be serious and nasty dragons here...

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 11:51:26 -0700

At 11:56 PM 8/19/2002 -0400, Richard Shockey wrote:
>There is power in collective political action

There probably is. Care to set of a 
[email-masked] discussion list for it?

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 15:25:17 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Fred Baker wrote:

> Care to set of a [email-masked]
> discussion list for it?

Yes, please. That way I can stop redirecting mail for this list into my
procmail folder labeled 'spam'. :)

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From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:16:33 -0700

> There be serious and nasty dragons here...

I'm sorry if you understood my post to mean "replace 'facsimile' with
'email' and we're saved from spammers".  I certainly didn't intend to
have that meaning.

-d