Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 23:42:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Josef Grosch <jgrosch@superior.mooseriver.com> To: jbryant@tfs.net Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ESCAPE! Florida Cruise/Vacation $598/4 People Message-ID: <199705090642.XAA21847@superior.mooseriver.com> In-Reply-To: <199705090516.AAA00327@argus> from Jim Bryant at "May 9, 97 00:16:09 am"
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Jim Bryant said: >[to those of you receiving a repost of this, sorry, i had mistyped one >of the recipients email addresses] > >please excuse the verbatim quoting of the spam to the list... please >note my Cc line... > >given that most of the people on this mailing list are either >operating system programmers, ISP owners, ISP sysadmins, or people >looking for technical help with the FreeBSD Unix operating system, we >must not overlook that the spammers are now using our mailing list to >further their scams... > >i urge all citizens of the United States of America on this list to >forward all spam to your senators and representative on capital hill... > >maybe they will get the point, and legislate that unrequested email >[spam] be made legally a violation of privacy, and thus illegal. i do >not pay for junk email. the internet is not the us postal service. > >i recall that the house voted recently on behalf of all of the spam >scam artists, and refused to make it illegal. > >let's give congress an idea of how BIG the problem is... > >i ask every ISP owner on this list [yes, i know that there are a lot >of you] have YOUR USERS forward a copy of EVERY spam message they get >[yes, i bet if we all got the users doing it, we can generate easily a >million messages going to congress for every spam message hitting our >systems, i'm sure your customers will willingly comply!!!] to their >congressman... > >we must understand that our congressional representitives lead a very >sheltered life and are probably not even aware of the actual scope of >the spam PROBLEM. > >let's educate them! a million forwarded spams a day is my goal, yes i >understand that this will be an easy goal, all it will take is one >spam to each customer of each ISP on this list every day, congress can >even get a bonus million or more spam copies if each customer receives >more than one spam every day! the house and senate may both may need >new mail machines, terabyte capacity... > >and thus i announce the formation of the League to Fight Spam with >Spam. membership is open, and all you have got to do to join is >follow the suggestions above... > >all they have to do is vote for common sense, and not for soft money. > >Fight Spam with [focused] Spam!@# I'm tired of it, are you? > >should we get the television networks aware too? > [ Spam Deleted. You've seen it ] Jim, Your intentions are noble and to be commended. As a person who first started reading netnews in 1984 I have gotten very tired of the spam clogging up netnews and the mailing lists I read. However, I don't think spaming congress is going to help. First off most people in congress have no idea what email is. Most don't read their email and I don't think that most of their staff read email. Hell, if I remember right only 40% have email addresses. If you were following the debate when Sen. Eaton (?) introduced the Communications Decency Act it was very clear that most of the members congress had no idea what the Internet was let alone what email was. As the recent house vote NOT to stop spam demonstrated most congress persons are deeply in bed with those who support spam. Stopping spam is viewed by those on Capital Hill as anti-business. Those people who current control the congress are not very receptive any action that is viewed as pro-consumer and anti-business. IMHO we are on our own. There is a law on the books that could be used against the spammers. US Code Title 47, Sec.227 was put in place to stop people from spamming fax machines. AFAIK no lawyer has used this law against email spammers but I have been told by a lawyer friend that if a state Attorney General wanted to they could make a very strong case to apply this law against spammers. However, in the current political climate, don't hold your breath. If were are to stop spammers we have to make it unprofitable for them. This has to be a war of attrition. Spammers have costs just like any business. A T1 is not cheap neither is an 800 line or the geeks they hire to write the spam engines. If no one responds to their spams then they are just redirecting bits to /dev/null. What we should be doing is developing and distributing tools to stop spammers at the entry to sendmail and majordomo. If we could develop these tools then ISP who use these could advertise that their system is "Spam Free". That would be good marketing. Josef -- Josef Grosch | Another day closer to a | FreeBSD 2.2.1 jgrosch@sirius.com | Micro$oft free world | UNIX for the masses
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