To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 23:14:56 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spam Suggestion
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002 01:17:25 -0400 (EDT) "Keith F. Lynch"
<kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:

> What's the point in enacting new laws when existing laws aren't
> being
> enforced?  And CAN'T be enforced, since the amount of spam is so
> utterly overwhelming.  If they hired the whole population of the
> world
> as police, and each new cop were to process one complaint per hour,
> they still couldn't keep up.
>

While it may be fair enough to lament the fact that existing laws are not
being enforced re spam, I don't see that the large volume of spam
precludes enforcement against spammers of existing laws, but rather that
enforcement is difficult for other reasons.  Many drivers, even perhaps
most drivers, exceed the posted speed limit sometimes, and the fact that
millions of drivers frequently violate that law does not stop police from
ticketing speeders.  Indeed, the reality that police do ticket speeders
surely has an effect on how fast drivers choose to drive.

The letter in the Post pointed out that spammers could be identified and
located by examining the trail left by the payments they accept.  But
first, it should be noted that spamming itself is not illegal, just as
junk mail is not illegal.  And it would be difficult to legislate
criminal penalties for spamming, since such a law would require defining
spam in a way which would withstand a constitutional challenge.  The law
against junk faxing authorizes civil suits against junk faxers, not
criminal penalties.  Under that law, junk fax is defined as unsolicited
fax messages sent to a party with whom the sender does not have an
existing business relationship.

Criminal penalties for fraud can be very severe, so that might be a good
way to attack spam under the law, for spam which is in fact fraudulent.
There are two broad categories of fraudulent spam: one is where payments
are processed and accrue to the spammer or the associated business
entity, but the product is not delivered as promised or is misrepresented
(e.g a money chain letter), and the other where the payment may or may
not be processed normally, but the information (credit card number, bank
account number) is used for fraudulent purposes.

Vigorously investigating and prosecuting fraudulent spam would presumably
have an effect on that particular type of spam, but I am skeptical that
that would stop fraudulent spam, since it seems that what it would mainly
do is leave the field open for fraudulent spammers to operate from
countries where the laws are not being enforced.

Ron Kean

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