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New Opt-Out Clause Makes CAN-SPAM Worse
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jun 10, 2008 04:39 PM
from the if-that-were-possible dept.
from the if-that-were-possible dept.
snydeq writes "Three years of mulling, and the FTC has made the CAN-SPAM Act worse, writes Gripe Line's Ed Foster. Chief among the offenses in the FTC's updated rules is an even worse approach to opt-out procedures. In the future, in scenarios where multiple marketers use a single email message to spam you, 'only one of the senders — the one in the From: field — need be designated the official sender who is responsible for honoring opt-outs,' Foster writes. Translation? 'Other "marketers" who used that spam message, not to mention the spamming service that actually provided the email address list, don't need to honor opt-outs. So try as you might to get yourself off a list, the real spammer can just keep changing the designated sender in the From: field and legally keep on spamming you.' The irony of the CAN-SPAM moniker gets thicker."
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Irony? (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong Name for the Act. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Genius (Score:5, Interesting)
So in other words this brilliant change in the rules now means that SPAM isn't SPAM. Maybe that is the real way to get rid of it... just define that it doesn't exist.
There is no poverty in North Korea either apparently.
Re:Genius (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case unsolicited bulk email would be illegal if you didn't follow all these rules up front. But for the guys that already got the grace period to follow the law it's been twisted just enough to be meaningless!!!
Power, telco, FCC, FAA, FDA, etc all those rule making agencies are run like this. It's just funny to see something so simple twisted so quickly. This is the same reason nobody wants internet neutrality put into law. Then any exceptions to blocking become "rules" that they "have" to block other content/providers... The telcos are already writing the rules the way they want with lots of backwards worded loopholes.
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Definition. (Score:4, Insightful)
However, some things are absurdly easy to define -- take freedom of speech. You are allowed to say pretty much what you want, where you want, short of "Fire!" in a crowded theater. No one has yet found a way to twist the First Amendment into meaning something it doesn't -- into somehow meaning, for example, that all speech except blasphemy is protected.
Murder is another one. Killing someone on purpose is murder, short of self-defense or actual war.
I think net neutrality is sufficiently easy to define that if we can get any law right, it should be this one. ISPs should transfer all packets to where they are addressed, with no preference given to one packet over another -- except for a specific customer, at their explicit request (if I ask for a spamfilter, they may intercept port 25.)
Granted, telcos may subvert the process, but I'd rather at least try than have no legislation at all.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, some things are absurdly easy to define -- take freedom of speech. You are allowed to say pretty much what you want, where you want, short of "Fire!" in a crowded theater. No one has yet found a way to twist the First Amendment into meaning something it doesn't -- into somehow meaning, for example, that all speech except blasphemy is protected.
That's debatable; let's look at the text:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Maybe I'm just too naive, but it seems to me that it's established such that: a) there would not be a new Church of England taking power in the US and that people can choose whatever religion they want b) people could criticize the goverment. c) people can protest when the government is being stupid. d) the press should be able to report on activities of the government without limitations.
Yet somehow in the last couple hundred years, this has evolved to mea
Re:Definition. (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you translate "or abridging the freedom of speech" into "people could criticize the government"? It makes no mention of the government, except in the final point, "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances", which is a separate bullet point.
In other words, the entirety of the Amendment, as it pertains to freedom of speech, is "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". That's a pretty clear way of saying "the Government can't legally prevent you from saying anything -- period".
Standard disclaimer applies: IANAANHIRTCIIEIJIIDYP (I Am Not An American, Nor Have I Read The Constitution In Its Entirety, I'm Just Interested In Discussing Your Point).
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So now I can get offers from multiple Nigerieans (Score:5, Funny)
Here's why, the Repug reasoning process: (Score:5, Funny)
2. Things that are done for money are good. Corollary: people wouldn't do good things but for being given money. Well, we wouldn't, and we have no problem extrapolating to everybody.
3. Spamming is done for money.
4. Therefore spamming is good.
Re:Here's why, the Repug reasoning process: (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, what kind of sick monster would wish Marriage on anyone?
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Can't render it any more impotent (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn! I guess this means an end to the three wonderful years of relief we've all enjoyed from spam thanks to the oh-so-effective initial rules.
Seriously, this change really doesn't matter, except it will let the FTC claim success due to a massive drop in the number of "valid" complaints against spammers. Whining that it weakens the existing law strikes me as similar to complaining that a serial killer violated a restraining order.
I'm impressed, in a way (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it is no wonder that congress has managed to somehow attain an even lower approval rating than our current commander-in-chief, seeing as they managed to squirt out something like this instead of dealing with important national issues.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't see why this is all such a problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, such good people would surely include a visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism, honored quickly and used only for compliance purposes.
And they would provide relevant subject lines, legitimate physical addresses, and adult-content labels on their "value-added, pre-solicited sales invitation messages."
And, of course, never falsify header information, use open relays, or send messages to a harvested email address. Right?
Seriously, what are they really hoping to accomplish with this act? Has it done any significant good?
Re:I don't see why this is all such a problem. (Score:5, Informative)
Your being sarcastic, but you are more right than you think.
The CAN SPAM act isn't REALLY directed at the "Get V1-a--g-ri-alis". Those guys don't provide any sort of optout anyway. The CAN-SPAM act really just regulates legitimate newsletters and their behaviour, and this little tweak makes life a little easier for them.
The idea here if I read it right, seems to be that if I send out legitimate newsletter and company-X advertises in it, and then you opt out of my newsletter, under the old can-spam rules if company-X advertises in another newsletter that you receive, you could complain that you opted out, and charge them with spamming... which is really a bit absurd. Its like cancelling your subscription to forbes and then being offended the same ads for Lexus showed up in your subscription to Times!
As you observed the "real" spammers don't give a crap about CANSPAM. This doesn't affect them, because CANSPAM never really affected them. So opening this 'loophole' is primarily about making it easier for legitimate newsletters to operate.
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More Proof That Lawmakers Don't Understand Tech (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More Proof That Lawmakers Don't Understand Tech (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who makes a sufficiently large contribution to their campaign, apparently.
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You Have this Completely Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
First let me qualify by saying that I am not only a lawyer in the Internet and anti-spam industry, but I helped author the "affiliate spam" section of CAN-SPAM, to which this clause is a natural extension. We are also fresh from a teleseminar which we provided on this very subject.
The following is an excerpt from our CAN-SPAM compliance page, which is at http://www.isipp.com/can-spam.php [isipp.com]:
In large part, this requirement is an effort to hold affiliate programs responsible for how their affiliates promote them. If the affiliate is honest about who they are, and their "From address", and if they put something in the email about themselves, then the user will be able to unsubscribe from the affiliate's list. But if the affiliate is dishonest, and hides their true identity, then the affiliate program for the product featured in the email (which will be the product being sold under the affiliate program) becomes responsible. In other words, if you are advertised in the affiliate's email, and the affiliate cloaks who they are, you become responsible. By shifting responsiblity for mislabled email to the companies being advertised in the email, there is an incentive for affiliate program managers to more tightly police their affiliates.
Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.
CEO/President
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
http://www.isipp.com/ [isipp.com]
wow.. what a set up for a Joe Job... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As it stands, the majority of people who receive the 'opt-out' spam DO NOT WANT IT, which makes the solution obvious: Change the system to Opt-In. That way, those of us who want something from someone, get it, and those whose spam is unsolicited can be prosecuted.
It is ridiculous that something so problematic to day-to-day functions is treated as OPT-OUT. If you're a policy maker, how do you justify that aspect of the policy?
There is only one solution: (Score:3, Insightful)
Time for the form again (Score:5, Funny)
( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(X) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(X) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SPAMMERS WRITE CAN-SPAM ACT (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a press release [prwebdirect.com] about his affiliation with his son's company. Here is a speaker bio [affiliatesummit.com] of Steven Richter, and here is the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] confirming the statements in the GP post. While I agree that it is nice to document one's assertions, it is pretty easy to fact check stuff like this.
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