Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Now this is a very important accomplishment. The law clearly protects advertisers first-amendment rights. State politicians are thwarted from passing nonsense laws that get overturned on first court review. In the trade it is being called Can-Spam with the 'can' no being pronounced like the can in trash can but like can as in can/may.
The bad guys still are sending the same old stuff and dressing things up a little to seem like they are complying.
With all due respect to Bill Gates, I expect that 2006 will come and go without Microsoft (or anyone else's technology) solving the problem.
Until the point of attack on fraud and pornography switches to cutting off credit card accounts from the spammers, I predict nothing will happen. Take the money out of it and the problem will go away.
I suspect you are correct, but if M$ get there a couple of years late it will still be a great achievement. If they get there 10 years late it will still be welcome. :)
The Can-Spam law was never going to work, just like the "Do Not Call List" doesn't! Notice how the tele-marketers are creeping back now?
These are social and technical issues, they need social and technological solutions....not political ones.
Robbing banks has been illegal for a very long time, yet in most major US cities it still happens every week.
Email spam is a global problem, and there is no global court of law to deal with it. There is no global government to even start to deal with it.
Educating people to ignore spam is a very long haul. M$ or someone else will get there first. ;)
Another part of society wants to use emails criminally to commit fraud and to sell pornography. This group has been very successful in stiring up the rabble amd mixing up the issues. They fanned the issue into email-rage because it works for them. Law after law has been declared unconstitutional.
Mail fraud has the same potential as email fraud but the US Postal Service has done a good job against fraud when compared to what's happening. Huge mass-marketers have been effectively controlled. The banking system has strict laws against using it to further fraud.
We have RICO statues in place to aggressively go after criminals that use corporate shields to commit crime. They are invoked routinely against drug trafficers and organized crime. Bank have reporting requirements for large transactions. Corporate papers are rquired to open accounts. RICO can freeze assets immediately when a crime is detected.
We know that the overwhelming majority of all spam is linked to two or three hundred entities, that keep changing their names and credit card accounts. The credit card companies know who they are dealing with, yet no laws are being enacted.
Email filtering is an after the fact attempt to keep criminals from hurting people. It is reactive not proactive. Cutting off the spammers access to new credit accounts is proactive. Freezing spammers assets works against drug trafficers and terrorist, and it will work against spammers.
One major problem is that credit card companies are big-time spammers. They saw the crooks making big money from it and have emulated them.
