Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 08:44:31 -0500 From: "Mike Avery" <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com> To: FreeBSD Chat <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Europe says yes to spam Message-ID: <199905111355.IAA15943@hostigos.otherwhen.com> In-Reply-To: <3737F24F.70BE6FCA@uk.radan.com>
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On 11 May 99, at 10:03, Mark Ovens wrote:
> Greg Lehey wrote:
> >
> > Just saw this on the aussie-isp list.
> > > The European Parliament has voted to legalise spam. The European
> > > Internet Service Providers Association (EuroISPA) campaigned against
> > > the idea, a UK MEP made a passionate speech to ban junk email and
> > > nobody spoke in favour of it. Despite this, it was passed 266 votes to
> > > 137. A clause to ban the harvesting of email addresses from newsgroups
> > > and web sites was removed before the bill was passed.
> :-(. Mind you, about 90% of the spam I receive comes from the USA so
> I'm not sure what good it would have done had they voted the other
> way. Many (most?) of this junk e-mail includes a statement that under some
> Bill or other it is not classed as spam. Obviously the US legislators use
> a different definition of spam/junk e-mail to those of us in the real
> world.
Not really. The law that is referred to hasn't been passed, so it
isn't a law. At least not yet. Also, the law, if passed, prohibits
forging addresses and requires that the spam has a *WORKING* opt-
out mechanism. All the ones I've seen have neither.
Their comment about being in compliance with the law are as
specious as those made by many anti-spam people who threaten to
charge spammers service fees. In the end, neither has a firm
connection to reality.
> There is also another law being proposed by the EU which would make
> the local caching of Web pages by ISP's effectively illegal (something
> related to copyright IIRC).
*sigh* We may need to have a "stupid politician" contest. Of
course, if we notify the honorees, they might consider it a
compliment.
However, based on my limited knowledge of copyright laws, I would
think that if the material provider approved caching of their
material, it would become a "fair use". As I recall, there is a HTML
flag that indicates whether a page may be cached. So the furor may
be a "non-issue". The only big issue here is that copyright laws are
often enforceable by international treaty.... so some poor net-admin
on the other side of the planet could be hassled for no good reason.
> > > Net users are required to register with national opt-out lists if they
> > > do not wish to receive junk email.
If it worked, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
Mike
======================================================================
Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com
(409)-842-2942 (work)
ICQ: 16241692
* Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way *
A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day:
Karaoke is a Japanese word meaning "tone deaf".
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