Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 15:25:24 +0100 From: paul@originative.co.uk To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com, chat@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Europe says yes to spam Message-ID: <A6D02246E1ABD2119F5200C0F0303D10FF3B@octopus>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Avery [mailto:mavery@mail.otherwhen.com] > Sent: 11 May 1999 14:45 > To: FreeBSD Chat > Subject: Re: Europe says yes to spam > > > On 11 May 99, at 10:03, Mark Ovens wrote: > > > Greg Lehey wrote: > > > > > > Just saw this on the aussie-isp list. > > > > > The European Parliament has voted to legalise spam. The European > > > > Internet Service Providers Association (EuroISPA) > campaigned against > > > > the idea, a UK MEP made a passionate speech to ban junk > email and > > > > nobody spoke in favour of it. Despite this, it was > passed 266 votes to > > > > 137. A clause to ban the harvesting of email addresses > from newsgroups > > > > and web sites was removed before the bill was passed. > > > :-(. Mind you, about 90% of the spam I receive comes from the USA so > > I'm not sure what good it would have done had they voted the other > > way. Many (most?) of this junk e-mail includes a statement > that under some > > Bill or other it is not classed as spam. Obviously the US > legislators use > > a different definition of spam/junk e-mail to those of us > in the real > > world. > > Not really. The law that is referred to hasn't been passed, so it > isn't a law. At least not yet. Also, the law, if passed, prohibits > forging addresses and requires that the spam has a *WORKING* opt- > out mechanism. All the ones I've seen have neither. True, but that doesn't help in any way with the spam problem. Most spam is a one-shot and opting out doesn't reduce it for the future because you're future spam will be from someone else. > Their comment about being in compliance with the law are as > specious as those made by many anti-spam people who threaten to > charge spammers service fees. In the end, neither has a firm > connection to reality. > > > There is also another law being proposed by the EU which would make > > the local caching of Web pages by ISP's effectively illegal > (something > > related to copyright IIRC). > > *sigh* We may need to have a "stupid politician" contest. Of > course, if we notify the honorees, they might consider it a > compliment. > > However, based on my limited knowledge of copyright laws, I would > think that if the material provider approved caching of their > material, it would become a "fair use". As I recall, there is a HTML > flag that indicates whether a page may be cached. So the furor may > be a "non-issue". The only big issue here is that copyright laws are > often enforceable by international treaty.... so some poor net-admin > on the other side of the planet could be hassled for no good reason. The problem is that it's the content providers themselves who are pushing for this legislation. Their revenue streams are based on the number of hits they get and those are dimished by caching systems. Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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