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[Asrg] Re: Read this article and then never darken our doors again...

Zorya wrote:

This one is for those of you who will respond at every opportunity
about how spammers will just move off-shore as disproof of any hope
for a legal approach to the problem, over and over and over and over,
demanding the criticism be responded to, over and over and over and
over and over, as if it were a coup de grace:
Barry,
First, let me state that I agree with the principle of your post. I, too, think that rigorous law enforcement of all relevant statutes against spammers could have a large effect on the volumes of spam seen on the Internet. The best example of this would be the amazing disappearance of South Korean-originating messages after they put strong laws into place.

However, there are two qualities of copyright infringement enforcement that are not (yet) present when dealing with spam:
1. There are no strong, lobbying corporate interests pushing for stringent regulations and harsh action. On the contrary, some of the big lobbyists oppose strong anti-spam laws in the U.S.

2. Some of the biggest spamming countries (traditionally, China is cited as the best example) have no interest in cooperating in cracking down on their 'local entrepreneurs'. China is also notably absent from the list of countries involved in the action you linked to.
Take a look at BBC's reportage of this event: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3651749.stm>. From the bottom of that article, the participating nations were

... Belgium, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary,
> Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden.

When we can get some of the large American and European ISPs on board to lobby for enforcement action, we may yet see news like this about anti-spam raids. Specifically, we'd want to see AOL, EarthLink, MSN, Comcast, RoadRunner, Wanadoo, & BT. Concerted pressure from that crowd would have a *HUGE* impact. Until then, I think ad-hoc filtering and small, directed technical measures (I'm thinking LMAP here) will be the order of the day.

Philip Miller

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