[eff-austin] Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?
Doug
doug at dwhite.ws
Fri Aug 1 05:08:47 PDT 2003
I guess it is unfortunate that I personally disagree with the article, almost in
its entirety. I fully support any technological means to prevent the junk
from ever entering my system, using my bandwidth, my productivity and my storage
space, while some "decision" or another is being made. Sure, to some it seems
arcane to using blocking methods at the server level, but the quantity of the
spew alone justifies the practice.
I have never considered it a form of "freedom" for an advertiser to pummel me
with advertising at my own expense. While I realize not all advertising should
be considered as spam, most of it is, in my opinion, and consequently I use a
variety of methods to prevent the MTA from even connecting to my mail server.
If the widespread use of this technology hurts email advertising, then so much
the better. I would prefer email systems be able to return to their intended
purpose. My email hosting service provides the free option of unfiltered and
filtered (spam blacklisting), and it is no surprise that over 98% of my clients
opt for the filtered routing.
I will continue to support legislation and other methods to transfer the cost of
advertising back to the advertiser. If there are enforceable penalties for
fraudulent message headers and routing, so be it. If the legislation forces
dissidents and whistleblowers to use postal mail, so much the better. I do not
agree that these so-called "freedoms" need to be at my expense.
Legitimate email - deliver as intended. non-legitimate email - block the
connection at the server.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Choate" <ravage at einstein.ssz.com>
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
X-Orig-To: "Carl Webb" <webbcarl at hotmail.com>
Cc: <eff-austin at effaustin.org>; <tlc-discuss at lists.cwrl.utexas.edu>;
<cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com>; <hell at einstein.ssz.com>
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 6:31 AM
Subject: Re: [eff-austin] Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?
For this to be taken seriously one must be able to -define spam- as if it
were a mathematical entity (eg a 'point'). It must be absolutely
differentiable from -all- other speech.
You can't do that, nobody can.
Anti-spam bills are worse than spam because they put transient feelings of
anger above the principles of freedom.
Freedom is -not- free!
On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Carl Webb wrote:
> Antispam Bills: Worse Than Spam?
>
>
> By Ryan Singel | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next ;
>
> 03:55 PM Jul. 30, 2003 PT
>
> While no one has sympathy for the devils that fill inboxes with promises
> of lower mortgages and larger members, not everyone is supporting the new
> movement to banish spammers from the Internet.
>
> Some online advocates worry that heavy-handed antispam measures, such as
> centralized blacklists and charging for delivery, will destroy e-mail.
> Advertisement
>
> * Story Tools
>
> [Print story] [E-mail story]
>
> Electronic Frontier Foundation's head counsel Cindy Cohn, for instance,
> argues that antispam crusaders are forgetting the Internet's first
> principle -- information flows freely from end to end. Cohn fears that
> the Internet's openness will be collateral damage in the war against
> unwanted e-mail.
>
> Cohn says her organization's position on spam blocking can be boiled down
> to a simple proposition: "All nonspam e-mail should be delivered." It's
> an information age take on the Hippocratic oath, which requires doctors
> to first do no harm.
>
> "It's not the job of an ISP to block e-mail," added Cohn. "E-mail isn't a
> toy anymore. If I don't get an e-mailed notice from the federal district
> court mailing list, it's malpractice."
>
> Even some who sell antispam software to companies say that ISPs shouldn't
> be blocking mail.
>
> "Blocking e-mails is folly," said Brian Gillette, whose company sells an
> enterprise-level, antispam appliance called trimMail Inbox. "If I'm an
> ISP and I stop a $150,000 equipment sale because I decided it was spam,
> I'm in for a lawsuit."
>
> Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union,
> worries that the ability to speak anonymously on the Internet is being
> put at risk by federal antispam legislation.
>
> Howard Beale of the Federal Trade Commission told House members at a
> recent hearing on proposed antispam legislation that "spam threatens to
> destroy e-mail."
>
> Several of the bills currently under consideration would make it illegal
> to mask a sender's identity or forge routing information, both of which
> are tricks used by spammers to avoid the ire of those who receive their
> e-mails. But it's also a tactic used by dissidents in countries with
> repressive governments who want to communicate with like-minded
> individuals.
>
> "Many of these bills criminalize a message header that isn't accurate,"
> said Johnson. "That's not fraud. If you send out messages through an
> anonymizer, then you could get sent to jail."
>
> Cohn concurs, arguing that the bills criminalize the behavior of people
> -- such as closeted gay teens or government whistle-blowers -- who have
> legitimate reasons for speaking anonymously on the Internet.
>
> EFF already has been a victim of overbroad spam filters. Its newsletter,
> which has more than 30,000 subscribers, has been bounced by aggressive
> keyword filters. In one case, its message was blocked because it
> contained the word "rape," used when talking about EFF's advocacy on
> behalf of an online group, Stop Prisoner Rape.
>
> When the EFF asked around, it found that other noncommercial bulk
> mailers, such as listservs, were running into problems, too.
>
> For example, AOL blocked e-mails from one of EFF's clients, MoveOn.org,
> an online, liberal political action group which saw its membership swell
> to more than 2 million during the antiwar movement.
>
> "MoveOn.org, one of EFF's clients, has problems all the time, but
> MoveOn.org is now big enough to be on whitelists," said Cohn. "I'm more
> concerned about the next MoveOn."
>
> Challenge-and-response systems pose particular problems for newsletters
> and listservs. These systems try to cut down on fraudulent e-mail by not
> delivering a message until the sender replies to a confirmation e-mail
> sent by the intended recipient's ISP or e-mail host.
>
> "Declan McCullagh of Politech and Dave Farber of Interesting-People can't
> do 100 challenge-responses a day," said Cohn. "That, as a solution,
> doesn't scale."
>
> It would be wrong to call Cohn soft on spam. While in private practice
> she sued a spammer and won a court injunction and $60,000. And her
> employer uses antispam technology on its own servers.
>
> The difference, according to Cohn, is that the SpamAssassin software EFF
> uses doesn't block spam, it simply rates each e-mail. Staffers then set
> up their e-mail clients to separate messages into different inboxes. This
> keeps the main e-mail boxes free of spam, but allows individuals to check
> the spam folder occasionally to see if a legitimate e-mail was
> incorrectly tagged as junk.
>
> Many in the technology industry think that only better technology can
> stop the spam deluge.
>
> "The only people who can stop spammers are other technologists," said
> trimMail's Gillette.
>
> The most promising new approach is better filters that use Bayesian
> algorithms to tag spam automatically and move it into a spam folder. The
> algorithms look at the body and header of an e-mail and judge from past
> experience whether an incoming message is junk. Users then train the
> algorithm, by moving misclassified e-mail from one e-mail folder to
> another.
>
> Paul Graham, who many credit for applying Bayesian filtering to the spam
> problem, is ecstatic at the power of the new filters.
>
> "I don't need blacklists," said Graham. "My own software is better than I
> am at deciding what is spam and what is not."
>
> Several open-source and commercial products, such as SpamBayes and Spam
> Bully, already use Bayesian filtering.
>
> The ACLU's Johnson hopes the new technology will head off the worst of
> the antispam legislation.
>
> "Why do we want to start imposing a different world for the Internet than
> we have in the real world?" asked Johnson.
>
> "Let the marketplace handle spam," he said. "When Congress wants to show
> they are doing something about an issue, they often screw it up."
>
> End of story
>
> Send e-mail icon Have a comment on this article? Send it
>
> More stories written by Ryan Singel
>
>
>
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--
____________________________________________________________________
We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
are going to spend the rest of our lives.
Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"
ravage at ssz.com jchoate at open-forge.org
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