Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 01:24:35 +0000
From: johnl@xxxxxxxx (John R. Levine)
Subject: Re: [IP] No, US antispam bill is not death to anonymity
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
> This bill makes it a crime to use any false or misleading
> information in a domain name or email account application, and then
> send an email. That would make a large fraction of hotmail users
> instant criminals.
If you actually read the text of the bill, you'll see that it makes it
illegal to send commercial email or transactional mail ("we shipped
your order" or "your account balance is $19.34") with false or
misleading header information. The only Hotmail users who this would
make into criminals are the ones who sign up for accounts and send
spam to make your body parts bigger.
Anonymous advertising is an oxymoron. The point of ads is to get
people to buy stuff, so only makers or vendors of the stuff that's
advertised have an interest in doing so, and if they can't find you,
they can't to buy from you. I suppose this would make "astroturf"
fake grass-roots campaigns harder, but I can't get too upset about
that.
Anonymous mail that isn't commercial isn't affected at all. Don't
take my word for it, read the act. It's not that long.
There's plenty wrong with the CAN SPAM act, but let's worry about its
real faults, not imagined ones.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@xxxxxxxx, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer
Commissioner
"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web