I can sympathize with this guy. A Wired article reports that a Californian has been arrested, and faces a maximum of five years in jail and a $250,000 fine, for threatening spammers. Maybe he overreacted a little bit, but the spam problem has gotten so bad that it might be tough to find a jury that would convict him. It’s ironic that this story was reported the same weekend that Congress finally passed anti-spam legislation.
For those (like me) too lazy to read the entire bill, the New York Times has an article describing the major features of the legislation. I thought this law seemed like a good idea when I first read about it (despite the corny CAN-SPAM name), but I’m beginning to have my doubts. It looks like it’s actually going to do very little to stop spam, and, by striking down stricter state laws, it may actually open the doors for more.
I’m sympathetic to the idea of a uniform federal law. It’s hard enough to try to regulate the Internet at a national level; state-by-state regulation could get ridiculous. What state law’s should apply to an email message? The state where the sender is? The state where the recipient lives? The state where he reads the message, if he’s travelling? The state where his ISP’s mail server is located? In many cases, it would be difficult or impossible for a sender to know where a message might end up, making it hard to ensure compliance with whatever state law might apply. So a uniform federal law might be better, if it had any teeth. But if it’s going to strike down all the state laws, it should include many of their protections, and this one doesn’t look like it does. The best part of it is the do-not-email registry, and that’s not even a requirement, just a suggestion.
I’ve gotten more sensitive to the subject of spam. For a long time, I’d managed to keep my primary personal email address (the one I give to people I like and trust) free of spam. One of the advantages of having my own domain is the ability to create new email addresses as needed. If I create an email address for a special purpose, and it falls into the hands of spammers, I can throw it away with little or no inconvenience.
But within the last couple of weeks, I’ve started getting dozens of spam messages to my primary address. If I throw that one away and start using a new one, I have to let a bunch of people know, and then worry about lost messages from people I forgot about. And, no matter how careful I am about who gets the new address, it’s probably only a matter of time before it starts getting spam, and I don’t want to keep playing that game.
I’ve avoided using spam filters in the past, for several reasons. I resent being forced into that by the spammers. I don’t want to keep playing the game of trying to figure out what is spam and what isn’t, and updating the filters as the spammers figure out how to fool them. I don’t want to lose legitimate email because it was falsely identified as spam. Most of the ISP’s that provide spam filters don’t allow the customers to customize them; you either accept the ISP’s definition of spam, or you turn the filters off. I don’t want my email filtered by rules I have no control over.
After pondering the problem, I think I may have a viable solution. It doesn’t involve violent action against the spammers (although if anybody starts a defense fund for that guy in California, I’ll contribute). Watch this space for reports on how it works out.