Slamming the Spammers
I read today on Jason Cherniak's blog that amongst other announcements Stephane Dion is promising an anti-spam law. . Hey Liberals. Hey Tories. Hey anyone in the States. Hey anyone reading this anywhere: I have your anti-spam law.
Prosecute any person or company who distributes pornographic materials to any email address owned by any person under the age of 18. Be sure to insert a reverse onus. Before pornography can be sent to an email address the owner of that email address must prove to the distributing company that the recipient is over the age of majority or the distributing company is held responsible should that email address prove to be under the ownership of a minor. Some attempts at legislation like this have been introduced in the past, but nothing with the reverse onus I am speaking of. What got through congress was a bill that insisted that spam be labeled [sexually explicit]. Sure. that's like labelling a box of candy with a label that says HEY! FREE CANDY! AND MOM'S NOT GONNA SEE YA EAT IT!
Yes. I know my idea is not perfect. Yes, I know spammers use anonymous remailers. Yes I know about overseas harbours. That's nice. Work out the details yourselves. In the meantime - remind me why you elected officials are letting these people send porn to our children again? Why are we letting this activity continue? Google spam filters stop spam from getting in our faces, but they don't stop the snooping eyes of small and innately curious. How would you react to someone standing outside your junior high school ripping pages out of Hustler and thrusting them at your ten year old? Not happily I expect. So if you want to really slam the spammers, I just gave you your opening. and even if they switch to other products and we still get spam, the point remains.
You're welcome. Now get on it.
2 comments:
One word. Enforcement!
The problem with this is enforcement. It's hard to apply Canadian law in Russia (where the majority of spammers exist) it is even more difficult when you have no idea who the spammer is due to the anonymous nature of the internet.
SPAM is like telemarketers, it will always be around.
Yep. I would agree with that - except that I've already seen areas of law where global cooperation has made a difference. You think Russians like their children looking at that kind of stuff? I'm pretty sure the political win for this is universal. There is nowhere on earth where spammers contribute to the country's GDP in enough volume to lobby for protection.
As for the anonymity - we all know that that is a fixable problem as well. You are as anonymous until there is a subpoena to the remailer. You just charge the anon remailers with an aiding and abetting offense. Anyway - I simply dont believe that this is impossible. Remember - you prosecute the entire value chain. So if a porn company is advertised via spam, you charge that company thereby skipping over the spammer all together. This is all very doable. And would get a politician a lot of votes.
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