RSSMD Judge: Spam Law 'Unconstitutional'
By Ed Oswald | Published December 15, 2004, 1:52 PM
A Maryland Judge on Tuesday ruled that the state's antispam law is unconstitutional because it attempts to regulate out-of-state commerce. The decision came as part of a ruling that dismissed a case against an alleged New York spammer brought by Eric Menhart, a law student at George Washington University. In the case, the spamming party was in New York, the recipient in Washington, and the ISP was in Virginia.
Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran said that although it didn't involve anyone in Maryland, the judge's ruling was in error. "The facts in this case may well be beyond the scope of our law, but that doesn't mean our law is unconstitutional," Curran said. Menhart says he will appeal.
I think a way to get rid of atleast email spam is make sure all legite email servers have a type of cert ans if a mail server recieves an email that is not from a certified server then it gets rejected. I know this is not 100% full-proof but it is a step in a good direction. This idea also can spark an even better diea. I am tired of spam especially when you carry a blackberry and some gets through. I also think all spammers who are caught should get a severe beating in public to make other idiot spammers take notice. I know that this beating can not take place here in the states and in most other parts of the world but it is something I would love to see. Next offense let them loose a hand when caught spamming.
I fear that an international body trying to govern the net would be about as bad as the people trying to make taxes viable for internet use. Or trying put laws on it from state to state for taxes or regulations.
I also know the above paragragh can be used to argue about spam but tell me one person who actually enjoys getting spam that could be in the category "Legally Sane" I hate spam it waste not only my time but my resources and bandwith. I get nothing positive out of spam. I believe spam is worse than any virus or worm. I am a network/system/security admin engineer depending on what hat I have to wear on any given hour of the day. I would prefer to battle a worm outbreak on my network than deal with spam on a daily basis. I feel spam is just a parasite feeding on everything good that the internet has to offer. I also feel it is an evasion of my privacy when I get spam or those pesky annoying door-to-door salesmen (atleast the door-to-door salesmen is trying to make a so called honest living). A spammer most time is doing things illegally and the spam you can opt out of takes a so called 30-90 days on most counts to get removed out there db. I want to know what kind of out of date crap they are running that cant be updated realtime??
Spam is just plain evil and annoying to any person, even the ones that have the so called mental problem of ordering crap off QVC 24/7 or doing the online gambaling. But the above statement is for another rant.
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|From my understanding, spamming is not commerce because goods are not bought or sold by the spammers...they are meerly offering the capability to purchase/sell goods/services...so why is there any question about this? If I told a door-to-door salesperson that I considered it harrassment and trespassing by coming up to my door and offering me goods/services, and that same salesperson (or even somebody from the same company that knew of my feelings) approached my doorstep again, then I could have them arrested for harassment and trespassing. This is true regardless of the medium used for contacting an individual. I'd really like to see a ruling on this, I wish spammers would have as much attention as those using P2P apps to pirate licensed software/music/movies...maybe then it'd actually start getting enforced.
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|We can't do a darn thing about it. It's everywhere. Cyber Crime, and even viruses cannot be helped for one simple reason: It's a Worldwide web, and we have a National and State- constitution. It's sad, and I have absolutely 0 suggestions on how to resolve this problem, nevertheless it's the problem. The Internet simply can't be regulated unless all 238 "Geopolitical entities" on planet Earth agree on one set of laws, which an "International Internet Regulatory Commission" would regulate. I am by no means suggesting we do this or anything like it, I'm just stating fact. OK, I've released my steam now.
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|Great point. It has been proposed before that there needs to be an international body for regulating the Internet - like the United Nations. This has specifically been discussed regarding ICANN. The big issue with international regulation is you run into the same problems as the United Nations does now (corruption, inability to compromise, slow resolutions), which would make regulation for a rapidly evolving Web happen too slow to make a difference.
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|I have to say that a governing body for the internet is a great idea. But the problem with any international body, aside from the fact that a party (country) is only governed by that body once it has ratified the treaty that governs the International Organization. So if nobody ratifies it, it is a useless committee/organization. Considering all the troubles the UN has getting everybody to ratify a treatice and basic (read: fundamental) human rights, I don't think that anti-spam would work out too well.
Having said that, the way to stop spam isn't through legislation (federal or International). Everyone needs to stop reading the spam. Everyone. Don't buy what they want to buy, even if you need it. That is one way.
The other way has already been touched on. Secure email, working like a kerbos server where the originating server and the receiving server communicate directly and verify that this is a valid non spam email. The verified server is checked with a list (like a DNS) and if the opposing server is not on the list, the email gets discarded. Unfortunately, this is the only realistic way to send email, and it is going to take a lot of organization.
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