On Thu, 29 May 2003, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote: > About the law: current laws are unable to keep spam in check. Is this a > problem with the law? I don't think so. A good percentage of all spam > (but certainly not all of it) breaks existing laws. It seems unlikely > that additional laws will make people who already operate outside the > law change their behavior. Type 3 spammers are doing most of this. These abusers are usually also in violation of criminal federal statutes (viruses and cracking), but the feds won't pursue them, since it seems to be a victimless, low value crime. This doesn't require more legislation so much as it requires Law Enforcement to focus on the problem. > It seems the answer to this was "no" five or six years ago. In the mean > time, many things have changed. We now have more advanced techniques > and more processing power at our disposal. Also, spamming in general > has become much worse and many more children are online now, who are > subjected to spam that isn't always "child friendly" to say the least. > Maybe the answer is still "no" but the time is right to at least > revisit the question. Yes. But quite obviously, the "spammers" appearing to sell stuff like child porn are not really selling anything. This is Type 3 abuse (no doubt by radical anti-spammers) meant to offend people. Spam volume is up quite a bit over the last year. But there aren't more spammers. There are more Type 3 abusers running larger stables of virus infected machines, and using those stables to send junk that looks like spam. This isn't Type 1 or usually Type 2 spam. The timing of the rise seems to correspond to MAPS loss in Exactis, and the realization by certain radicals that they have to use illegal means. --Dean