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Habeas Seeks Poetic Justice for Trademarked Spam 172

Posted by CowboyNeal from the better-living-through-haiku dept.
Remember the company who started using haiku to fight spam? According to a news.com article, it will now be tested in court. Habeas is suing two internet marketers, saying that they've included Habeas' haiku in their mail, thereby lowering their SpamAssassin score by 6 points, but allegedly violating the trademark. It's interesting because the end effect of this will be more or less spam, but it's based on trademark law. It'll also be interesting to see how well this holds up across national boundaries.
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Habeas Seeks Poetic Justice for Trademarked Spam More

Habeas Seeks Poetic Justice for Trademarked Spam

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  • National boundries don't matter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:43PM (#5668924) Homepage
    For spam to American e-mail addresses to be effective, a product has to be delivered TO an American physical address.

    Any judgement against the spam should be enforced against the money being transacted to the spamvertiser.

    Cut off the money supply to the spammer's customer, cut off spam.

    • Fine the *originating* companies (Score:5, Informative)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:50PM (#5668945) Homepage Journal
      I've been saying this all along.

      If you fine the people who advertise improperly, then they will stop hiring spammers to do it.

      Plus its easier to track down the company that is offering the product/service then the scummy spammer that will hide from you.
      • Hey, that had too many syllables! Fine advertisers And they stop using spammers Reseller quick find
      • The problems I've seen from large companies is that they hire "marketing" companies who say they have "opt-in" lists and then proceeds to spam the living hell. Complaining seems to just get you listwashed so I just end up blocking them. Seems to work

        Rus

        • Re:Fine the *originating* companies (Score:4, Insightful)

          by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:18PM (#5669051) Homepage
          "he problems I've seen from large companies is that they hire "marketing" companies who say they have "opt-in" lists and then proceeds to spam the living hell. Complaining seems to just get you listwashed so I just end up blocking them. Seems to work"

          Doesn't matter how many layers deep the originating company buries it. Somewhere there is STILL a transaction of money from that company that ends up in the spam.

          And somewhere from the spam there is a resulting transaction that results in profit for that company.

          Which, if it's a LEGAL enterprise, is all on the books. Else the company, managers and officers are comitting felonies.

          If it's NOT a legal enterprise, then obviously the spammer himself is aiding and abetting, itself a crime.

          How many want to guess how much crime and fraud have been aided and abetted by Ralsky and co?
          • i would totally mod you up but since i lack mod rights..

            it's illeagal for a company to hire someone else to do the dirty work, much like it is illegal to hire anyone to commit crime, and afaik, here even if the company doesn't know they're hiring them to do something illeagal they're still guilty(they should check what they are hiring them to do, especially if it sounds suspicious "you'll reach million people with this advert!"). they're contracting the another company to do some magical marketing. suppose
            • it's illeagal for a company to hire someone else to do the dirty work, much like it is illegal to hire anyone to commit crime, and afaik, here even if the company doesn't know they're hiring them to do something illeagal they're still guilty

              Yes, they would be guilty, if spamming were illegal. But spamming is not illegal, so you really don't have a point.
              • He does have a point;

                Unauthorised use of a Trademark is illegal.
                Unauthorised copying of a complete artistic work such as a Haiku poem is illegal.
                Unauthorised use of a Patented method of having your email recognised as not spam is also illegal.

                Spam containing the Habeus headers BECOMES illegal not because it is spam, but because it is an unauthorised use of a registered trademark, a copyrighted Haiku, and a registered patent.

                That's the whole point. Go read the FAQ.
                • Unauthorised use of a Trademark is illegal.

                  It's not illegal to use trademarked text in other works.
                  • Not in this context.

                    For example, I'm free to mention the word "SPAM(tm)" which is a trademark of Hormel; I can mention the relationship between the SPAM meat product and bulk email. I can mention SPAM in a comedy sketch, although I probably couldn't use a restaurant full of vikings since that's too similar to a previous and still copyrighted work. Or I could sell a recipe book that mentions SPAM as an ingredient, as long as it was clear that the book was not an official publication of Hormel foods.

                    OTOH if

          • "Which, if it's a LEGAL enterprise, is all on the books. Else the company, managers and officers are comitting felonies."

            It's not a crime to do private transactions for goods and services, as long as the goods and services themselves are not illegal, and as long as you aren't trying to avoid a tax or other regulation.

            If I, an apple salesman, go to an orchard to buy apples, I don't have any obligation to show a paper trail from that transaction. I and the farmer can make the agreement, negotiate terms, ex
        • "companies who say they have "opt-in" lists"

          Then a $1,000,000 dollar fine should convince them that it's worth ensuring that the companies they deal with don't lie.
      • I have to agree with you completely.
        We run spamassassin in house to filter out spam destined for our employee accounts.

        It gets dropped into a very large file.
        Then once a month, 2 employees go through the messages, if the product is from a large national company, we print out the message, find a PR contact and upper level management for the company, and we have a nice form letter that goes out. The idea is, we know who you are, its YOUR reputation on the line (as anonymous spammers have no reputation) and
      • If you kill the people who advertising improperly, they won't be able to hire spammers to do it. Then, if you kill the spammers, they won't be able to spam. Personally, I see that as the ideal solution, but so few agree :(
    • For spam to American e-mail addresses to be effective, a product has to be delivered TO an American physical address.

      Any judgement against the spam should be enforced against the money being transacted to the spamvertiser.

      Cut off the money supply to the spammer's customer, cut off spam.

      On of the first spams I got was for a Russian carpet cleaning service. I frequently get spams in Korean and other Asian languages. They aren't targetting American consumers; they just get caught in the spread. You can't s
    • Where's law enfrocement when it comes to fraudulent businesses, anyway? At least half the spam I have is for products that are obviously fraudulent, and some (like untested medical products) that may be illegal.

      About the other half is for porn, of which I presume a large precentage are running credit card scams.

      The Iraq T-shirts ad may be about the most legit spam I've gotten, but who knows. But I got only one. The other 99 in my bogofilter-current directory are all total BS.

      Is it the war on terror or

  • spamspamspamspam (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 )
    spamspamspamspam ...

    Oh, and gobe is back in business [gobe.com]! But I guess that's spam too, or at least off-topic.

    Slashdot needs SpamAssassin for comments :) If your comment triggers as 3.5 or higher, it should yell "YOU FAIL IT!" at the user. Automatic 3.0 points if you're an AC.

  • Tagging (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:50PM (#5668941) Homepage
    Well I hope that the spammers get whats coming to them. Keeping stats of my email recently there has been a dramatic rise in the amount of spam I've been getting I've thankful for spamassasin to filter off all the crap.As a slight aside I found out today that debian charges $1000 for each advert (spam) posted to the list. Now that is a cool policy :)

    Rus

    • Re:Tagging (Score:3, Informative)

      by WCMI92 ( 592436 )
      I've been using PopFile for the last month and a half... Out of thousands of emails I've received, Popfile has made only a handful of mistakes. It runs over 99.3% accurate. I've used the same e-mail address for 5 years, and it's obviously on virtually all spam lists...

      I too have noticed that the number and voracity of spam has increased DRAMATICALLY in the last few months. And lately some seem to find their way around my blockers.

      I don't get it... If I am going to such extremes to AVOID spam, why sho
      • Whats really annoying me now is that I'm getting spam selling anti-spam software. I mean how stupid do spammers think I am. I know how stupid they are

        Rus
        • "Whats really annoying me now is that I'm getting spam selling anti-spam software. I mean how stupid do spammers think I am. I know how stupid they are"

          And what moron would buy anti-spam software from a Spammer?!

          That is as smart as buying your "secure" communications gear from the NSA... ;)
          • Considering that most spam is, directly or indirectly, an insult to the intelligence of the one that receives it, this kind of things is simply coherent with other messages.
            • "Considering that most spam is, directly or indirectly, an insult to the intelligence of the one that receives it, this kind of things is simply coherent with other messages."

              True... Only the LEAST INTELLIGENT among us respond to spam. They are the .001 percent that encourages Ralsky and company to ANNOY MILLIONS WHO FUCKING WANT TO KILL THEM WITH REPATED STRIKES WITH A HAMMER TO VARIOUS LIMBS THEN THE HEAD who wouldn't buy a HEATER from them if stranded on the South Pole to reach them...

        • Re:Tagging (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Zeinfeld ( 263942 )
          Whats really annoying me now is that I'm getting spam selling anti-spam software. I mean how stupid do spammers think I am. I know how stupid they are

          In most cases that is not quite what is going on, sale implies that they own the goods in question which most spammers do not. Basically they are taking credit card numbers in return for the promise of spam software.

          In many cases you don't get the spam software anyway, if you do it probably won't be a legal copy and you are likely to find your credit card

      • I don't get it... If I am going to such extremes to AVOID spam, why should the spamemr WANT to go to lenghts to get around it? I obviously am someone who DOES NOT and WILL NOT patronize their products... So why waste the effort?
        See rule#3 [dyndns.org].

      • The parent poster writes:
        I don't get it... If I am going to such extremes to AVOID spam, why should the spamemr WANT to go to lenghts to get around it? I obviously am someone who DOES NOT and WILL NOT patronize their products... So why waste the effort?

        Easy enough answered. Now you and I probably both use spam filters on our private accounts, and would never respond to spam. Thus, evading our spam filters is a pointless, pointless task.

        Joe Blow's internet/email provider (MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail

  • Trademarked Haiku (Score:5, Funny)

    by idfrsr ( 560314 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @01:52PM (#5668951)
    I have trademarked this
    Use it at your own expense
    I'll see you in court
    • God. Why is it so hard for people to understand the diffrence between trademarks and copyrights. I can use all the trademarks I want as long as I don't use them as my own name or the name of my products/services!
  • Haiku fighting spam
    Now spammers spamming Haiku
    Poetic justice?

  • I'll admit that I find spam as annoying as the next guy, but I try to take precautions and use a fairly effective junk mail filter [apple.com], so spam at best rises to the level of minor annoyance. Aren't there better things to spend our money and time lobbying lawmakers and dragging people to court about?

    Just a question.

    • Re:How Big A Problem Is Spam Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:05PM (#5668997) Journal
      If you don't think bandwidth use is a problem, if you don't think needing spam filters is a problem, if you don't think storage space is a problem, if you don't think that losing legitimate email when a spam filter malfunctions is a problem, if you don't think unauthorized computer access is a problem, if you don't think that crashing mail servers under abusive volumes of traffic is a problem, if you don't think wire fraud is a problem, then consider this:

      Spam is threatening connectivity and shutting down useful services. Open relays used to be a public convenience. Because of spam, if you set one up today, you'll find thousands of places blocking your traffic. Mailing lists used to allow non-subscribers to post. Because of spam, you now have to subscribe first before asking a question. We used to imagine the net as a worldwide utility. Because of spam, many people are now blocking everything from China.

      Does this answer your question?

      • It's funny that the anti-spam company's name is Habeas, because, from where I sit, the erosion of habeas corpus rights [slashdot.org], and civil rights in general is much scarier than having to sign up to mailing lists before you can post, and the inconvenience of not being able to have open relays

        • Perhaps, but don't you realize one technique of fascist states is to waste nearly all the resources, which causes the common people to become so busy and distracted, they don't have time to do anything about reclaiming their rights? Didn't you read 1984?

          Yeah, Orwells point talked about war and building war machines, but it can apply elsewhere. A consumer spending -> throw away -> replace economy.

          An economy where everyone thinks they have to have own piles of cash and expensive (but low quality) me

          • Just think if slashdot was filled with spam messages.

            You're new here, right?

            Try reading at -1 and you'll see a lot of spam. Not necessarily selling you stuff, but a ton of noise. Moderation improves the signal-to-noise ratio.

            Perhaps there's some sort of moderation we could do to our incoming email? (Hint: try SpamNet [cloudmark.com] if you're running Outlook.)

            • I suppose I wasn't clear and precise. How about: "Just think if slashdot was filled with spam messages at +5." Does that work?

              Perhaps there's some sort of moderation we could do to our incoming email? (Hint: try SpamNet if you're running Outlook.)

              Hmmm...interesting system (though I don't use OE). Looks like it might work very well. Only problem is, what if some joker starts marking all the messages on some mailing list as "spam"? Some might do it to be evil, but also some stupid people sign themselve

      • "Spam is threatening connectivity and shutting down useful services. Open relays used to be a public convenience. Because of spam, if you set one up today, you'll find thousands of places blocking your traffic. Mailing lists used to allow non-subscribers to post. Because of spam, you now have to subscribe first before asking a question. We used to imagine the net as a worldwide utility. Because of spam, many people are now blocking everything from China."

        Spam has basically made e-mail useless. What we nee

      • Because of spam, many people are now blocking everything from China.

        Funny, I thought China was blocking everything from many people.

        Maybe all the spam coming from China is their government's secret conspiracy for everyone to block them.

        They want to block you, but in Soviet China, you block them! =:-O

      • Spam is a small-to-moderate problem. It's big enough to attract attention, but not big enough to justify the sensible solutions.

        It's a spin-off of anonymous internet use. The SMTP mail infrastructure allows anyone to anonymously send email to anyone. The solution to spam is to replace the system with a new one that accepts mail only from satisfactorily identifiable people. With that in place, all sorts of mechanisms -- technical, commercial and legal -- can be used against spam. Without it, all measu

      • It certainly suggests the cure(s) (as in many other substance or technology distribution regulation problems) are nearly as bad as the "problem," the famous Pyrrhic victory [shu.ac.uk]...

        I think if we get back to P2P or E2E, with good tools for users to opt-in to (enforcing filtering is as unpleasant as enforcing reciept) and the marketers realise that there is zero marginal value in sending to a user who has even the mildest filtering, as they are not going to buy... nor is it likely the random strings addressed in t
    • There are better things, for sure, but spam is not a small problem. It's fine that you can block out most of it and make it a minor annoyance, but what if everyone would do that? The end result would that there would that you would get more spam, because the spammers would be forced to find a way around your filtering system, which undoubtedly they eventually would do. Also, spam is overall a drain on resources: a drain on bandwidth, a drain on processing power passing them on from server to server, and

      • Re:How Big A Problem Is Spam Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:13PM (#5669038) Homepage
        "here are better things, for sure, but spam is not a small problem. It's fine that you can block out most of it and make it a minor annoyance, but what if everyone would do that? The end result would that there would that you would get more spam, because the spammers would be forced to find a way around your filtering system, which undoubtedly they eventually would do. Also, spam is overall a drain on resources: a drain on bandwidth, a drain on processing power passing them on from server to server, and a drain on disk space storing them, so spam is a problem, and it should be stopped, even if right now it is only a "minor annoyance"."

        So, we should all leave our front doors unlocked, and the keys in our car's ignitions just to prevent the crook from having to WORK HARDER to violate our space?

        I fail to see the logic in your agument, though I agree filtering is not the answer.

        What should be illegal is unsolicited advertising that uses the victim's RESOURCES. That is theft.

        • Missed his point (Score:3, Insightful)

          by siskbc ( 598067 )
          So, we should all leave our front doors unlocked, and the keys in our car's ignitions just to prevent the crook from having to WORK HARDER to violate our space?

          No, his point is that, at best, spam can be solved only for the technologically aware elite who know how to use mail filters and such better than others. His point is that if everyone else learns how to use our tools, spammers will find better tools, forcing us to find yet better ones.

          In other words, it's like the old joke about two guys that are

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Spam is a VERY big problem.

      The trouble is that you, as an end user, can't possibly SEE how big the problem is. In addition, filters, while protecting you, the end user, only MASK the extent of the problem.

      The costs incurred by spam are incremental, and are spread out among all the various parties who must decide whether to transmit, or block each spam message. These parites include far more than the sender and the recipient.

      There's an interesting whitepaper at

      http://word-to-the-wise.com/whitepape [word-to-the-wise.com]

    • Lets say that you are sick, and for that you head hurts, and you take an aspirin to solve this. You just did a temporary fix to one of the simptoms, but not are cured of the real problem. And worse, you became addict to aspirin, so you will have another problems (i.e. have the risk of losing a critical mails).

      Ignoring a problem will not make it disappear, but could make it grow worse until you really notes it, and maybe then will be too late.

    • I'll admit that I find spam as annoying as the next guy, but I try to take precautions and use a fairly effective junk mail filter [apple.com], so spam at best rises to the level of minor annoyance. Aren't there better things to spend our money and time lobbying lawmakers and dragging people to court about?

      This sounds reasonable. People said it when spam was just getting started. They said it when spam was a few percent of email. And again when it was 10%. Now it's circa 50% and still growing rapidly.

      The

  • patent (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Habeas has patented this idea. I don't know if this means they will block others from using the technique, but if so, I hope they go out of business pronto.

    This idea is cute but until I wake up one day and get zero spam and zero false positives, I'll remain sceptical. The patent just makes it more annoying.
  • Didn't the lawsuits from providers like Bigfoot target the spammer's forging of someone else's trademarked business name in the return address?

  • Reminds me of Coy (Score:3, Funny)

    by bahwi ( 43111 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:05PM (#5668998)
    perl -MCPAN -e shell
    cpan> install Coy ...blah...blah...blah...
    cpan> exit
    bash-2.05b$ perl -e 'use Coy; die();';

    -----
    Lao Tse departing
    beside a dam. A
    singing lark. A dove.
    -----

    Bankei's commentary...

    Died

    (Sayings of -e: line 1.)

    Ahh, at least perl can die a nice death. Check the man page too, all in Haiku.

    Now if only PHP and GCC had this. Then I'd be truly happy and transcending. Or at least able to procrastinate a bit longer.

  • embolden? (Score:2, Funny)

    by DataSquid ( 33187 )
    It's a perfectly cromunlent word.
  • In this overly-litigious society, I'm just waiting for Hormel [hormel.com] to file suit against everything and anyone using the word SPAM.

    • Re:Waiting.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by mistered ( 28404 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:39PM (#5669130)
      Nah, Hormel's cool about using the term spam [spam.com] to describe unsolicited commercial email. It's so refreshing to see a company have some common sense when it comes to trademark issues.

      We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

      This slang term does not affect the strength of our trademark SPAM. In a Federal District Court case involving the famous trademark STAR WARS owned by LucasFilms, the Court ruled that the slang term used to refer to the Strategic Defense Initiative did not weaken the trademark and the Court refused to stop its use as a slang term. Other examples of famous trademarks having a different slang meaning include MICKEY MOUSE, to describe something as unsophisticated; TEFLON, used to describe President Reagan; and CADILLAC, used to denote something as being high quality.

    • The problem is that the spammers NOT use the word spam to describe what they do, they call it "multilevel marketing", "internet promotions" or crap like that. The ones that use that name are mainly the ones that fight against it, and avoiding that they use the word "spam" will make that, well, could complicate things (more people understand what is spam that the ones that understand what UCE means)

  • ode to spam (Score:5, Funny)

    by 1nv4d3r ( 642775 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:12PM (#5669035)
    I love to get spam
    you can block it all you want
    meanwhile, my dick grows

  • $100 reward for information about a spammer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:15PM (#5669044) Homepage
    I, John Nagle, owner of the US registered trademark "Downside", will pay $100 to the first person who can provide to me the identity of the actual person or persons behind any of the following sites:
    • girlswhocry.net
    • contipay.com
    • profitabill.com
    Why? I've received over 16,000 mail bounces from spam advertising these sites. They, or some person associated with them, has been spamming with "downside.com" return addresses.

    Rules and comments:

    • I already know what Whois and traceroute will tell me, and I know who hosts those sites. That's not helpful. I do have information that indicates that the operation is inside the United States. So I will only pay for a US name and address at which a process server can deliver a summons.
    • The sites for "contipay.com" and "profitabill.com" look like sites of businesses that do billing for third parties. They're not real companies; they're false fronts.
    • These sites have changed hosting providers and billing arrangements since I started looking for them and talking to their hosting providers. But they tend to stay up, although they move around.

    I can be reached at "spammersearch@downside.com". Thank you.

  • habeas business plan (Score:5, Funny)

    by 1nv4d3r ( 642775 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:18PM (#5669054)
    step one is haiku
    step two is vast deep unknown
    step three is profit!

  • Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:19PM (#5669056)
    You could do this same thing with any arbitrary bit of text that is long enough to be considered a novel work under copyright law. There is nothing particuarly unique about their "SWE" haiku-containing chunk of email header text. The interesting part is that I gather they were aiming to produce something long enough to be copyrightable (the haiku is a "work of art" that is definitely protectable under copyright law) and the use of their trademarked phrases and slogans in the header pattern is protectable by trademark law.


    This gives them a dual-pronged legal attack approach on anybody who uses their header without permission, which I suppose makes it easier to enforce. And, in fact, they force their own hand by including trademarked slogans, because failure to sue violators would result in possible loss of trademark rights over time.


    However, the part that irks me is that according to their FAQ they have patented their "system". Their system? How the hell can you patent the use of a legal mechanism? There is no technical novelty to their spam filtering mechanism, and in fact, they provide no spam filtering themselves, you just set up Spam Assassin or other programs to account appropriately for their particular headers. I've seen plenty of other header-flagging schemes for assisting spam filtering. The novelty then is claiming both copyright and trademark to the header text? Okay, this makes me not terribly fond of this company, even though it's nice and all that they are giving royalty-free "licenses" to individuals, I am not clear that they could ever successfully prosecute a patent case against anybody else who uses header-filtering of copyrighted or trademarked text of their own choosing to fight spam. Anyone have any information on case law describing patents of legal constructs? How would that differ from trying to patent a tax shelter mechanism? If you could actually do that, don't you think KPMG et. al. would have been using patent law to protect their legal constructs all along?


    This is just one of those funny, small, novel legal ideas that would be nice to generate and give away to better humanity, but is simply crazy to try to build a business around.

    • Actually, the point of it being a haiku is twofold:

      It's a relatively small amount of text. This makes it simple to stuff into a mail header.
      Haiku is a recognised art form. This is intended to clearly establish coyright protection.
    • They are not using copyright law. They are using TRADEMARK law. The difference is important to the story and the legal case.

      I'll leave it to an expert to explain exactly why the difference is important here.

      -
      • No, they are using both. Go to their web page and try reading it again. The reason they use a haiku embedded in the header is that a haiku is a known form of art, and thus is protected under copyright law. They use their service name as a trademark embedded in their header as well. That's the whole point - a two pronged legal defense against unauthorized use of their header, so if one challenge fails in court, they can use the other.

  • Why put the poem in the extended headers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 1nv4d3r ( 642775 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:26PM (#5669087)
    haiku in header
    not viewed by your Aunt Tillie
    she won't know to sue

  • How to beat the spam detectors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tramm ( 16077 ) <hudson@swcp.com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @02:43PM (#5669144) Homepage
    If I were to ever become a spammer, I would:
    • send my mail with gnus (-6.4 points)
    • add an 'X-Cron-Env' header (another -6.4 points)
    • add a fake 'In-reply-to' (-3.3 points)
    • include the sendmail X-Auth warning (-1.008 points)
    • have a sig dash with dense sig (another -6.4 points)
    • include some diff -u output (-6.027)
    • Have 'foo@bar wrote:' attribution (-6.6)
    • Have quote text (-3.3)
    • Fake a good Exchange ID (-5.8)
    At this point, the message has a -45.135 bonus and would have to be super spam to be scored as spam. Let's hope none of those scum read the comments on Slashdot...

    • Re:How to beat the spam detectors (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:20PM (#5669289) Homepage
      Mod parent down! Scum DO read slashdot! Censor this post!
    • That, of course, is the problem with SpamAssassin and all similar spam detectors. They classify a certain group of bit patterns as spam (S) and another bunch as non spam -- ham (H). Anybody can download SpamAssassin and add a bunch of H to their content.
      SpamAssassin will unfortunately be on a treadmill -- playing catch up -- forever.
    • Taking the highest numbers possible, here's some typical stuff we see in spam:
      • "another mailing" will "never" be "received" (2.900)
      • "one time mailing" doesn't mean it isn't spam (1.626)
      • Claims you can be removed from the list (0.100)
      • Claims you can be removed from the list (2.900)
      • Claims you can be removed from the list (2.297)
      • Claims you were on a list (1.681)
      • Nobody's perfect (2.511)
      • Claims to be legitimate email (1.814)
      • Claims you opted-in or registered (1.637)
      • Claims you registered at their site (2.9

  • Junk Faxes Too (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Badmovies ( 182275 )
    Going after the people who hire spammers is a good idea. If they know that their company will be held liable for spam, they will not hire anyone.

    I play the same game with junk fax idiots. I call each and every company and talk to a company officer about the TCPA violation. At the end I make sure to remind them that they have been informed their advertiser is willfully breaking the law. Then I forward a letter to the FCC (copies of faxes included) asking for action to be taken against the parties.

    Event

  • Go, Habeas, go! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eggboard ( 315140 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:17PM (#5669276) Homepage
    I signed up for Habeas more because I wanted to help essentially fund their ability to sue spammers. I figured it would be a very short period of time before someone violated their trademark and copyright.

    If Habeas takes off, then everyone's headers will have Habeas lines in them, making SpamAssassin even more useful. If their spam suit succeeds, then spammers will be too freaked out about judgements to include Habeas headers.

    Of course, it won't solve spam, but anything that reduces volume and immunizes email -- spam can't necessary mutate against Habeas's particular immunity -- has a positive benefit.

    SpamAssassin now filters out about 95 percent of the spam I used to get. Since installing it in January, I believe I have saved myself several hours of deleting and filtering email, reduced my download time for email when I'm on the road (even headers), and made my email box so delightfully clean.

    And I have received not a single call or follow-up from someone whose email wasn't received that should have been. That is, no false positives at a level that I filter to /dev/null.

  • We need a new protocol for mail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by infernalC ( 51228 ) <matthew.mellon@g o o g l e . com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:45PM (#5669373) Homepage Journal
    Internet springtime
    the academics messaged
    amongst their boxen

    the diverse systems
    without the scourge of commerce
    by s m t p

    cooperated
    microsoft and sun and dec
    unisys, hp

    then came eye candy
    if you build it they will come
    e-commerce flourished

    summertime came soon
    venture capital dodo
    the money dried up

    quick buck was desired
    send lots of mail to granny
    she is rich and dumb

    in greed's bosom born
    marketing technique evil
    electronic mail

    spam spam spam spam spam
    filtering is most futile
    protocol not good

    header forging easy
    there must be a better way
    new rfc please

    even with new way
    migration would be a bitch
    forget about it

  • Why this might not be so good. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Saturday April 05, 2003 @03:54PM (#5669407)
    Because.. it's a trademark suit. Trademarks must be defended.

    Now. those people actively using this trademark in their emails, do they have a contract with the trademark holder?

    If not, what differentiates their use from a spammers use of the mark?

    Yes, we know what the trademark holder INTENDS.. but remember, a tradmark is a mark identifying a product or service.. and they must be defeneded, and clearly indicated as a trademark.

    Trademark does not give absolute power over a series of words.

    If this wins, it could set bad precedent.

  • Intresting that the people filing the suit don't even understand trademark law. This is a copyright issue, not a trademark one. There's nothing illigal with using someone else's tradmark in a string of text, just using that trademark as a name for your product or service.

    I can say "google" all I want, but I wouldn't be allowed to start my own search site called "google"
  • For a different approach to countering spammers, see "Guarded Email" at: http://www.dwheeler.com/guarded-email [dwheeler.com]

    The Habeus approach is interesting, but since they've patented it, they could easily make it the only game in town. In particular, I concerned that they might be able to tax any email sent/received! I'd prefer to see methods where there is no centralized authority. Decentralization removes the danger of a single point of failure (and the taxes that often come from one).

    • Perhaps they should make it the only game in town; similar to DNS, the usefulness of this technique is diluted if there's an ever-growing number of new antispam outfits all pushing their own trademark and haiku.

      And I doubt they would charge for it; the big and easy money comes from sueing spammers. If more people use Habeus and more people filter on it, the mark becomes more valuable and they can claim larger damages when spammers misappropriate it. If there were even the smallest charge for personal use,

  • It's 5-7-5 syllables, season or nature themed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday April 05, 2003 @09:37PM (#5670995) Journal
    A flower blossoms
    Poetry fights evil spam
    Fresh spring for email.

    Spammers pluck blossoms
    good idea wilts like cut
    flowers in summer

    A golden leaf falls
    Harvest time for Habeas
    Copyright on poems

    Alas, bitter cold
    These lawsuits are frozen in
    Chinese court system
  • If they want to get a spammer by the balls this is a good way. If they want to seperate important internal and client mail from junkmail they could do better with the more than obvious:
    Digital Encryption and Signing.
    There is no problem whatsoever in building a mailserver that only accepts a set of allowed public keys and signatures. All you have to to is train your folks to use encryption (easy: only send encrypted msgs) and convince your clients to jump the bandwagon when mailing to you (aka tell them you

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