From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Tue Feb 02 1999 - 09:55:06 MST
mark@unicorn.com wrote:
> Michael S. Lorrey [retroman@together.net] wrote:
> >Sending email which claims to promote one kind of website when it actually is
> >linked to another type is also mail and wire fraud.
>
> The mail and wire fraud laws are very, very good examples of why spamming
> laws are a really bad idea. Just take a look sometime at the numerous cases
> where these laws are used for things they were never intended to cover; back
> when I kept up with the hacking press, it seemed that practically every US
> hacker caught was charged with wire fraud with its high penalties, even
> though the crime was never intended to apply to hacking.
As we have discussed here, why should the fact you do it with a computer or with
your own voice make it different, if a computer is just an extension of the self?
Stealing my credit card numbers and bank account numbers by packet sniffing is no
different than conning them out of me by calling in person from some boiler room
operation, or faxing me a fraudulent bill for services not rendered.
Nor is it any different than sending me email with headers that do not represent
the content of the message, or sending content with links to sites which are
misrepresented by the content of the email.
The IP Food Script that Sasha pointed out is an excellent example. It is a means
of seeding the search engines with fraudulent information about your website,
while maintaining a public web page that might be wholly unrelated to the content
fed to the search engines by the script.
> >If a spammer can be charged for every one of the thousands or millions
> >of spam messages they send, then they will be spending a lot of time in
> >prison (probably more than their entire adult life) and paying whopping
> >fines.
>
> Oh get real. Late time I checked the average murderer spent about eight
> years in jail; you want to put spammers in jail for longer than murderers!?
> Do you have any idea how much these kind of laws are screwing up the US
> legal system? Next time someone's accused of spamming they'll just come
> out shooting, because they'll have nothing to lose...
A murderer steals all of my life at once. A spammer steals it in little bits and
pieces. Morally they are no different, it is just a matter of degree. If they take
little moments from millions of people without compensation, it still adds up to
several lifetimes of time wasted. Just because they spread it around means that
they are better? Now who is being inconsistent?
Now, what would be interesting would be to form an anti-spam association, and hire
members to kill spammers, since it is all in self defense of the group.... maybe
just strap them into chairs and force them to watch nothing but commercials on
tv....
> This list is really going downhill.
>
Oh, woe is me.
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