kasia in a nutshell

On the bright side, the time Congress spent on useless spam legislatin was time they didn't spend raising taxes, or further eroding civil liberties, or selling our souls to the RIAA.

Oh wait, I think they did do that last one.

I couldn't agree with you more. What it comes down to, however, is people that don't know what they are doing assuming that the internet is different than it is. First off, Congress seems to think that the internet is owned by the United States, which it is not. There is no single world leader and therefore, the internet cannot be controlled, simple as that.

However, we can do something to protect ourselves and I have said it before, but no one listens. Whitelists, as simple as that. If you aren't on it, you can't send me e-mail. I have to put you on it for you to send mail. This can be implemented with solutions already in place. How does a business get on it? The company will tell you (perhaps in your account profile) which email they will use to send you mail and add it to your whitelist. How else do people get on your list? I don't know, get creative. It is possible.

re: whitelists. Did it last week. Set up a new super secret email address that just friends and family have, and everything else to my domain gets bounced to mailblocks for the challenge - response thing.

What do you mean it accomplishes nothing. How does it enable them to legally send spam? They could legally send spam before, without any regulations.

At least now there are some regulations, and there are legal consequences for the really slimy ones. I doubt that any congressman thought this was a silver bullet. It's more of a platform for change than all us geeks are making it out to be. I would think that responding to the removal requests and complying with this act will make spam somewhat less profitable.

"What do you mean it accomplishes nothing. How does it enable them to legally send spam? They could legally send spam before, without any regulations...At least now there are some regulations, and there are legal consequences for the really slimy ones"

The majority of "really slimy ones" who aren't already off-shore will simply make that move; that is if you can track them through endless relays of infected zombie PC's and other increasingly common trickery. Good luck A. finding them. B. Prosecuting them. End result? Nothing.

Legit companies who didn't spam before will now believe it's ok provided they bury some obfuscated opt-out clause someplace. The majority of spam is already coming from legit companies (AOL and partners), who now simply have to adhere to guidelines (most of them already followed).

With any fear of bad PR (hey, you can opt-out guy), you'll see a hike in the number of companies who'll spam. End result? Worse than nothing. MORE spam.

As that number grows, the solution of a Do-Not Spam registry will be increasingly tossed around (FTC has six months to explore the potential under this new legislation). Such a list would quickly fall into the hands of less ethical spammers and those people would likely see their inbox flooded with the exact kinds of crap they signed up to avoid, and the original legisltation was supposed to stop! (porn, lies, blabbity blah)

This is before you mention that harsher anti-spam legislation that might have actually HELPED (like in California and Virginia) is being made impotent by these new federal guidelines.

Stopping spam requires both a technical solution, inter-twined with legislation drafted by people willing to stand-up to the well funded marketing industry. Period.

This bill does NOTHING to stop spam. In fact, it will more than likely make the problem WORSE.

Hmm, good :-) Job :]