From C|Net News:

Ohio legislation would send spammers to jail
By Reuters
Story last modified Wed Dec 01 06:13:00 PST 2004

Ohio legislators on Tuesday sent an antispam bill to Gov. Bob Taft, with the aim of joining other states that have laws that put spammers behind bars.

The bill, first introduced in January and already approved by the state Senate, on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed the Ohio House of Representatives, said an aide to Rep. Kathleen Walcher, who co-sponsored the bill.

Taft could not be immediately reached for comment. One industry source said the Ohio governor is expected to sign the bipartisan bill.

If signed into law, it would outlaw Internet ads that are deceptive or misleading and ban people from setting up false accounts to send spam, the junk e-mail that clogs consumers' online mailboxes and taxes the resources of Internet service providers.

The measure would also allow the state attorney general to impose criminal and civil sanctions against spammers.

The worst violators could face a minimum of six months in jail, as well as fines of $25,000 per violation, or $2 to $8 per violating e-mail. Their computer equipment could be confiscated, and Internet providers could sue for damages.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham called the Ohio bill "one of the strongest antispam measures in the country." Graham said the bill is aimed only at the worst offenders, who use fraud, deception and evasion to get their messages in front of consumers.

"This is not meant to snag Grandma sending her oatmeal cookie recipe," he said.

AOL, a unit of Time Warner, said it worked closely with the bill's sponsors.

The Ohio bill was modeled after the federal Can-Spam Act but adds tougher penalties.

Maryland has also adopted an antispam law with criminal penalties, and Virginia recently used its state law to send a North Carolina man to prison for sending hundreds of thousands of spam e-mail messages.


Story Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.


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It would be a good start. They can't do enough to them to make me happy.

Lycos Europe is running their Make Love, Not Spam project, but is getting backlash.

That seems much better than making spam.

Works for me.

I get as many as 300 spam a day.

I get spam to enlarge my male bits all the time. I never get bigger boob spam. Don't need the first anyway, but have always been curious about not having cleavage spam. Not that I want more spam. I wonder if spammers think women are harder to fool. LOL

Or maybe the spammers KNOW that you're a man and are casting dispursion at your genitalia. If you start getting boob spam then that's them calling you a girly man.

I think "she " is a woman. And not a girly man.

It's an interesting idea in which it would 'cost' spammers more money and thus decrease their profit. I like the premise of fighting back and being more proactive and less reactive, but there are many drawbacks.

Many times when spammers get a website, it is shared with other websites on that ip. So if you were to slow down that one, you are hurting others shared on that server. Then again the spammer might be using a drone to distance theirself even more from that nasty spam stuff. We should make the people who pay spammers responsible but not by attacking their hosting. Instead, do it on many fronts. Do it in law. And take the battle to the isps who harbor them. Make them pay for it there and then perhaps, it'll not be as much opportunity in the future.

Even if it is coming from a drone, then that drone should be shutdown. It's hurting isp's and their bandwidth, but it seems they are sometimes lucratively paid for it and what incentive would they have to stop it? I say we penalize the isp which is harboring the spammer, and the 'drone'. It would give them incentive to make things more secure and help their customers to be more security conscientious.

What's to stop the spammer from redirecting this back to lycos, or a competing site? The spammers are morally wrong and opportunistic bastards, but not stupid. It's not like they can't fight back or use this in their advantage. The spammers rarely use the website to send spam, but more likely open relays and other nifty tricks. I'd say that it is more often that the company selling something is getting someone else to send the spam. So it's not directly tied in with each other, other than one pays the other. The hurting on the hosting side of the advertiser will show them that spamming is not a good way to do business. Unless the Co. see's the err of their ways and realizes people do not like spam. Which I'm pretty sure they already know. The spam will not decrease in any significant manor as a result of this project.

Who has control of the list? Is it solely up to Lycos to determine who and who is not a spammer? Is it available to everyone who uses the program? They say the verification is done by hand, with someone opening a spam and confirming it is indeed spam. Still there is a thing called 'human error'. What happens if an innocent Co. gets on this list? Who will determine after the fact if they are or are not a spammer. And if they are deemed not a spammer, then who will compensate them for the loses?

If this is deemed legal, then what is to stop someone from grossly using the same ability to hurt a rival business? Even if this were to become a dominant project, what is to stop a spammer from sending out spam for a competing site? Knowing full well that, that site would be labeled as spam and thus be subjected to this attack. Or a politician using this idea to cost another just a little bit of money which would have otherwise been used in their campaign? "If you support so-so, then why not download and install a branded application that will help undermine an opponent by costing them money and thus in the long run they will have less to use on commercials and other junk".

Where does one draw the line? Today it is spam, tomorrow.. The internet was originally modeled in the belief that people would generally cooperate and be fair with each other. If such a belief no longer exists then the freedoms we take for granted today will obviously not exist in the future. If we can't figure out a method to do this in a more acceptable way, instead of a vigilante style, then it is doomed to failure.