New Opt-Out Clause Makes CAN-SPAM Worse

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."

Irony?

[Krishnoid]

At least the accuracy of the moniker is increasing. Better than PATRIOT act, digital rights management, etc.

Wrong Name for the Act.

[featheredfrog]

They should have named it "MAY-SPAM"

So now I can get offers from multiple Nigerieans

[multi-flavor-geek]

Just think I can have all kinds of people who had a dead uncle leave me millions of dollars in a Nepal lottery and now can't touch the money without offering me a job processing money orders for 50% of the take and a free bottle of Viagr14!!!!

Here's why, the Repug reasoning process:

[aeschenkarnos]

1. Money is good. Money is God's way of showing who he likes, and who he doesn't. (Except for George Soros.)

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:

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with premis 2. I affirm that there exist things done for money which are not good. I will give examples:

Vendor lock-in agreements.
Frivilous lawsuits.
Identity theft.
Murder.
Marriage.

More Proof That Lawmakers Don't Understand Tech

[HardCaliber]

Who do these lawmakers use as expert advisors on technical issues? Members of the Geek Squad that worked for Best Buy for a month, before being let go?

Re:Here's why, the Repug reasoning process:

[Gregb05]

There are people that would say that all but one of those is a good thing.

I mean, what kind of sick monster would wish Marriage on anyone?

Re:I'm impressed, in a way

[AndroidCat]

It must have taken a lot of long hard work to make CAN-SPAM even more useless. Ha ha ha, and they said that it couldn't be done!

Time for the form again

[Kayamon]

Your post advocates a

( ) 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!

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