Nigerian Spammers Using TDD/TTY Telephone Relay Service

Roy M.Silvernail roy at rant-central.com
Tue May 27 16:41:34 PDT 2003


On Tuesday 27 May 2003 09:01 am, Tim May wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 04:23  AM, Roy M.Silvernail wrote:

> > Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't yet seen incidents of spammers
> > following up
> > via another comm channel to find out why their spam was ignored and/or
> > repeat
> > their pitch.  For that matter, with all the First Amendment blather
> > heard
> > from spammers, I'd almost expect one of them to argue for proactively
> > enforced delivery and some sort of "obligation to read" statute.
>
> No, absolutely _nothing_ in the First can possibly imply any "enforced
> delivery" or "obligation to read." I assume you are semi-joking, but
> this bears repeating, especially for those here who seem to be unclear
> on the concepts.

I understand the limitations of the First, but I wasn't exactly joking.  And 
while I agree that the First cannot be said to imply such obligations, it 
seems to me that, on the surface, it would not preclude them, either.  
"Obligation to read" does not directly infringe upon the right to free 
speech.  A deeper examination would probably show that it would infringe on 
the implied "right to be left alone" that is usually referred to as the 
"right" to privacy, but I don't think that would be enough to prevent such a 
law from being enacted.  One would hope that it would be thrown out after an 
appeal reached the proper altitude.  But until a properly deep-pocketed party 
could pursue it that far, many of the more shallow-pocketed would suffer.

> Secondly, most if not all of the "anti-spam laws" are, in fact,
> directly in contravention of the First Amendment. 

Does this include descendents of the junk-fax laws?  (are there any of those, 
or haven't the lawgivers made the connection between fax paper and CPU cycles 
yet?)

> The First does not allow government to be in the content examination
> business. Those who think otherwise need....well, you all know what
> they need. I am serious. I am fucking sick and tired of bureaucrats,
> legislators, and even people on lists like this thinking that they have
> some authorization to examine the letters or e-mails I receive.

How about simply holding companies absolutely responsible for the methods 
used to distribute their advertising? Couldn't Truth In Advertising be 
extended to email solicitation?  The one thing that *all* UCE has in common 
is the attempt to sell something, and that requires an identifiable business 
presence. After all, people can't buy from a company if the company doesn't 
provide *some* method of contact to accept orders.  I'd think that would at 
least reduce the flow of UCE on behalf of US concerns.  It wouldn't touch the 
foreign-based spam, but how many people are going to order their bootleg 
toner cartridges from Botswana?  The advantage is that the complainant is 
examining the content, not the Gummint (provided there aren't unreasonable 
barriers hindering complainants).





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