By The Way...

The United Kingdom outlaws spam -- and, rather more importantly, imposes a hefty fine ($8,000+) for people convicted of spamming. Loophole: This ban only covers personal addresses, not business addresses. So you can still lose productivity at work! Still, even that would be better than what we have here in the US. My personal (non-AOL) address receives something like 500 pieces of spam each day. It's on the high end of the amount of spam people receive, I admit. My name's out there a bit more than most. But that doesn't make it any less annoying to me. I don't need to refinance my mortgage 75 times a day or add girth to various body parts every five minutes.

The UKs financial penalties won't stop the spam, of course; you have to find the spammers first, and then you have to pry them out of their fetid holes before you can sue them. But someone who does have the time and inclination to track them down can make them pay, literally, and clearly money is the only language spammers understand. As much pleasure one would receive in slathering a spammer in bacon fat and throwing him into a pit filled with starving rats from New York City, extracting cash from his bank account would be even nicer.

The US doesn't have financial penalties for spammers. Should we? Clearly, you can guess what I think about this. Tell me what you think. And if you think the answer is no -- why on earth not?

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• #3 Comment from admhantai 
  9/19/03 12:30 PM | Permalink

  Step in the right direction? Yes, but a pathetically small and ineffective one. With some luck this'll have some impact on SMS messages in the middle of the night. It won't affect e-mail spam at all.
• #2 Comment from admhantai 
  9/19/03 12:30 PM | Permalink

  Problem 2: The fine is tiny, limited to 8k unles the trial goes to jury (8k is nothing to a spammer), cannot grow based on scope of offense, never comes into play at all unless you ignore a cease order first, and most of all, applies to the UK only when only a tiny minority of spam actually originates in the UK.
  
  
• #1 Comment from admhantai 
  9/19/03 12:30 PM | Permalink

  Problem 1: >>Loophole: This ban only covers personal addresses, not business addresses.<< Define 'persnal address'. My PA is hantai@nospambots.over-clock.co.uk; but o-c is a computer store and I run their servers, be sure I'll be spammed to death legally even tho 99% of legit mail on that accout is strictly personal and I have no other personal address.