At 13:55 -0500 02-08-13, Eric A. Hall wrote: >This is where spam laws would have to deviate from the existing junk fax >laws. While the latter targets the senders, the former would have to >target the beneficiary. EG, if the spam comes from Russia but the >beneficiary is stateside, the beneficiary should get penalized based on >that fact alone. [yes this is US-centric, substitute accordingly] At 21:09 -0700 02-08-13, Dave Crocker wrote: >how does this help with the massive amount of international spam? As a basis for discussion of anti-spam legislation, here is a description of how the Swedish government treated commercial radio in the 1970s. (At that time, commercial radio was forbidden in Sweden. Now, it is permitted, but the interesting thing is not what they wanted to forbid, but how they tried to do it.) It all started when several ships on international water outside Sweden began sending commercial around- the-clock music. The Swedish government then made a law saying that such broadcast was illegal, and that if such a boat came into Swedish waters, it would be seized. They also forbade radio telephone to this boat. (In both cases with exception for emergency calamities.) This law did *not* work. The Swedish goverment then changed the law saying that any Swede who paid for an advertisment or earned money by co-working with such radio stations would be illegal. This worked! My conclusion is that if the government wants to stop spamming, it has to write a law saying that "any citizen who earns money from spam, or who is selling products or services through spam, is illegal. Even if the actual sending of the spam, and the company paying for the spam, is in another country. -- Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH) for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/