Murkowski anti-spam bill could be a problem for ISPs

Mon May 26 07:43:30 UTC 1997

On Mon, May 26, 1997 at 02:21:33AM -0500, Phil Howard wrote:

> Or has anyone considered the effect of this law on spammers outside of the
> United States?

Yes, many people have.  Various answers include:

	- The Smith amendment doesn't even address the physical location
	  of the machine which originated the message; it goes after the
	  company itself.

	- A number of countries already have legislation which serves to
	  block spammers, such as Germany's strict "unfair advertising"
	  statutes.

	- Many countries have poor connectivity, and could not possibly
	  hope to survive the amount of bandwidth used by spammers.

	- If all spammers move to one country, filtering becomes easier.

My personal favorite is the simple fact that while this law may not stop
100% of what we currently consider spam, it will seriously reduce the amount
without making it any harder to try other methods to stop the rest.

 ---------========== J.D. Falk <jdfalk at cybernothing.org> =========---------
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  |                     the Time Warrior" by Robert Holmes (BBC, 1974)   |
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