spam control again

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   From: josephc at etards.net
   Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 10:41:33 -0400 (EDT)

   The recently passed telemarketting laws and no-call lists are the
   perfect example of acting w/o thinking about the consequences.
   People were annoyed being called during dinner, so what do we do?
   Put 1000's of people out of work in an already piss poor economy.
   I'm pretty sure we could have come up with a more amlicable
   solution.

What's not "amicable" about the situation?  People are given the
opportunity to say that they don't want to be called unsolicited.
Unsolicited telephone marketing isn't being banned outright; it's just
being restricted to people who are willing to receive such calls.
Presumably those who are left are much more likely to actually buy
something, which saves time and money for the marketing firms and
their clients.  People who put themselves on do-not-call lists
presumably are not going to buy anything from any unsolicited caller.

In any event, an increasing number of telemarketing calls are
automated, so there's no issue of putting anyone out of employment.
Furthermore, live calls are still wasteful if they're made to people
who aren't going to buy anything.  Better to put these people out of
work and pay them unemployment while waiting for more economically
efficient jobs.

My standard answer to all for-profit telemarketers is "no".  My
standard answer to all charities who solicit over the phone (including
ones I've donated to in the past) is that they are free to mail me
information, but that I will under no circumstances pledge or
otherwise make any commitment over the phone (it's amazing how many of
them come back and say "well, if we send you something will you
promise to contribute $XXX?"  "NO!").  It seems to me that it saves a
lot of effort all around if I can give this answer once.

As the old saying goes, your right to swing your arm ends where my
nose begins.  Likewise, your freedom of speech covers your right to
express yourself and the right of people to listen, but it doesn't
require that people accept sound trucks blaring messages day and
night.

   Correct, banning child porn IS censorship. You NEED a certain level
   of censorship in order to protect the commonwealth. But censorship
   done w/o protection in mind needs to be prevented, especially on
   the Internet.

   I understand people are upset over SPAM, and the majority of SPAM
   prevention should not be done on the last mile. But people need to
   complain to their ISP, not their congressman.

Banning spam is a "time, place, and manner" restriction; it's
independent of the actual content.  In this case, the volume of spam
is sufficient to force ISP's to buy more servers (and more storage) to
handle the load.  If spam were 1% of the total email volume, and as
such didn't put much load on the network.  When the volume's high
enough (I've heard numbers such as 1/3 or 2/3) to force ISP's to
purchase additional servers, write additional software, and so forth,
it crosses the line from speech to action.  Your ISP can certainly
block a lot of spam, but it's going to cost you money and/or reduce
your bandwidth or otherwise quality of service.  Why should the
receiving ISP (which is just as involuntary as the final recipient)
bear the burden?

Some of the proposals (an email user fee) are also problematic: what
happens with legitimate non-commercial mailing lists, such as this
one?  Is the sender responsible for paying the charge for all of the
final recipients (in which case people who are active might face huge
bills where there's really no problem)?  Is the list owner responsible
(really bad for non-profit and volunteer community groups)?  Is the
sender responsible for one email only (in which case all a spammer has
to do is get someone else to host a list)?

I believe that it would be possible to define spam in such a way that
it restricts (at least in the law) 99% of the garbage while not
interfering in any way with legitimate commerce or criminalizing
either an inadvertent mistake or legitimate, voluntary mailing lists.
Certainly forging headers to point to nonexistent or false return
addresses, use of gibberish or embedded HTML comments to fool
scanners, use of third-party servers, alphabet or dictionary blasts,
and the like don't leave a lot of room for doubt.  Where there is room
for doubt (e. g. certain kinds of header forgery are legitimate, and
there may possibly some gray areas), that's what the justice system is
there for.