Senator Says Spammers Have First-Amendment Rights

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), while joining Rep. Gephardt (D-MO) in a discussion of how Democrats are the "guardians of the New Economy," noted that opt-out is better, because it gives companies their first ammendment right to contact you. I agree, companies do have a right to contact me. But they should be required to pay "postage" for that right. I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime. Still less then a stamp, but it'd make me a few hundred bucks a month for my time, bandwidth, and hardware costs. Spammers take away my property and happiness. Isn't that a right too? And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day. Thank god for mail filters.

New Meme: Advertising is Pollution

Naturally, the direct marketers are trying to control the debate by controlling the terminology, harping on the (deceptive) meme: Advertising is Speech.

I offer a counter-meme: Advertising is Pollution.

What is pollution? It's stuff that's introduced into an environment where it doesn't belong or isn't wanted.

Empty beer cans don't belong in the street. They interfere with the flow of traffic. They are an eyesore. It reduces the street's utility by getting in the way of where you want or need to go. They are also a health and safety hazard. Even if there weren't laws against littering in the street, social forces would operate to compel people to not litter. It is, as best, impolite; at worst, monsterously destructive to the environment and quality of life.

Advertising is nearly identical. It interferes with the normal flow of information. It's an eyesore. It reduces the utility of the info-sphere by interposing itself between you and what you want or need to know. It is also intentionally deceptive. Yet purveyors of advertising portray themselves as a necessary, indispensible part of modern captialist society, when in fact what they're doing is willfully polluting the info-sphere with stuff they know isn't wanted by anyone.

Tell me: How is cold-calling me at dinnertime trying to convince me to switch long-distance carriers a benefit to my household, the community, and society as a whole? How is stuffing my snailmail box with pulp paper coupons offering 3% discounts on crap I've never tried a good thing for me? How many lovely trees have been killed to print and mail this garbage which, in my case, goes straight into the recycling bin, unread? Why should I support wasting bandwidth to distribute deceptive scams and snakeoil, bandwidth that I could be using to lose at Quake and HalfLife?

Just as there are appropriate places for empty beer cans, there are appropriate places for Internet advertising. The social order of the Internet has unequivocally decided that advertising is pollution, and when it appears in unsanctioned areas, it will not tolerated. Period.

You have a right to speak. You have no right to pollute. Get over it.

Schwab

I like this

I guess it must be legal for me to call the senator at his house 400 times a day. IT'S MY RIGHT.

I guess that I can knock on his front door 400 times a day too. I just want to sell him some subscriptions to a pr0n site.

We need more senators like this, expanding the rights of Americans everywhere. Anyone know his address? I want to personally deliver a dump truck of spam and manure to his home address. That's my right too.

Defense of opt-out is flawed

If a person has the right to send spam, then honoring an opt-out list is purely optional.

I understand that we have a right to speak our mind in any forum, but there is no constitutional guarantee of an audience. It's pure crap that we have to pay for the priviledge of being an audience for garbage communications. It'd be one thing if the internet were provided to citizens free of charge, but the same way it's illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, it ought to be illegal for spammers to contact those who do not actively seek advertisements. Apparently the first amendment doesn't apply to cell phones, setting the precedent for restricting unsolicited e-mail on the internet.

You *can* get paid for spam

I work for a company called Javien [javien.com] that works on a suite of products, one of which is a mail filter that does exactly this. You can set up a toll to send to unknown mail recipients that will let the message through *only* if they have paid it.

It works in combination with our Micropay server (connected with Paypal [paypal.com] and eventually a number of other money transfer systems) so that the spammers can essentially pay you postage for sending you mail. We're about to release a Windows client (only days away), but a Linux one is in the works...

Take a look at the product sheet here [javien.com] for more info

Fraud

I agree that spammers have the right to send mail to anyone who is willing to receive it. And if you're running a SMTP server on the Internet and it accepts mail from anyone, then that means you're willing to receive spam.

BUT I also assert that using fake return addresses is a form of fraud, and the First Ammendment does not give you the right to defraud. If it does, then I'm going to start selling bridges and Florida real estate.

Don't fake your headers, and you're in the clear. Of course, the whole reason for faking headers and using open relays is to avoid accountability, because you don't want your "potential customers" to talk back.

The First Ammendment assures you're allowed to say it, but it doesn't assure that you're not responsible for what you say.

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Let's spam the DMA!

I had a truly evil idea recently that might just work.

We can address the spamming problem by spamming the DMA. They list e-mail addresses on the Internet on this page:

http://www.the-dma.org/aboutdma/contactthedma.shtm l [the-dma.org]

What we can do is compose an anti-spam message and send it to all the addresses listed on this page. The following guidelines are needed for maximum effectiveness and legality.

• Valid Reply-to or From address.
• Accurate subject line. You may not need to include "ADV:" because you are not selling a product, and this is a bad idea anyway because you don't want the DMA to filter the message.
• Removal instructions, with a statement that the e-mail is sent on a strictly opt-out basis according to current DMA guidelines. (Take THAT!)
• Comply with removal requests.
• Do not mailbomb. Send the messages no more frequently than once every 3 hours. There is no risk of overloading their mail server this way because you will only be sending about a dozen e-mails at a time.
• Include a statement which says the message is not spam because it is a part of a targeted marketing campaign. (Take THAT! Oh, the irony!)
• Personally address all the mail with correct To: and CC: headers. This helps evade many filters.

The point of the exercise is to give the DMA a practical demonstration of the perils of an opt-out marketing campaign.

The DMA will eventually start requesting removal. Comply with all requests. At this time you will need a new message, with new From, Reply-To and Subject headers, and new content.

If enough people do this, we can disrupt the DMA's e-mail system, and give them a practical demonstration on the problems that unfettered spamming will cause.
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Re:We need technical measures, not laws, for spam

Several points.

First, I would be more than happy to get rid of a lot of the small-time spammers. I'd like to stop getting "30 million addresses!!!!!!!" spams sent from some teenager's basement. I'd like to get rid of the "I'm HOT and WAITING for YOU" spam. I think Hash Cash could help here.

Second, the argument that hardware gets cheaper and faster everyday doesn't negate any benefit of Hash Cash or similar schemes; I'll just charge more every year. Last year you needed 16 bits to send me an email, now I want 25 bits. (Based on Moore's law, inflation should be around 160% / year.)

Third, lets say I require you to use about 10 seconds on a decent current desktop machine. If you want to send me an individual email, I don't think you'd mind waiting the ten seconds. I certainly wouldn't. Once I find out you're not a spammer, I'll let you send me email for free. Now, let's say a spammer wants to send out 1 million emails, and that he's got 10 decent desktop machines solely dedicated to computing hashes. It's going to take him more than a week to send out his email, at which time his angelfire webhosting account and hotmail email address will be long gone.

Even if companies like IBM, Sears or Microsoft want to get a huge farm to compute hashes and send out spam, I'd be reasonably confident that traditional measures (i.e. phone them or email them and tell them to stop bugging you) would be effective.

We need technical measures, not laws, for spam

I think these senators don't comprehend the reality with spam; that is, 99% of it has false origin information and has an opt-out scheme that doesn't work or only results in more spam.

However, I don't believe in making laws against spam. They'll always be outdated and interfere with legimate uses of email, since it can be very hard to define exactly what is spam. (Someone taking my address from a newsgroup posting and trying to sell me printer toner is spamming, but how about an email from a company I bought something from a year ago?)

Adam Back [cypherspace.org] has an interesting proposal called Hash Cash [cypherspace.org]. The idea is that if you want to send me an email, you have to burn some CPU cycles to compute a partial hash collision. I choose how many bits are required. Friends and family can send me email for free. I'll charge a few bits for the store I shooped at last week, and even more for people I don't know. If you're in ORBS or MAPS, perhaps I'll charge even more.

Government

So, if Opt-Out is the way to go, when can I opt-out of paying Income Tax and Social Security? Neither one is doing me any good. The government will have their First Amendment rights, while I'll have my Fourth and Tenth Amendment rights.

It's NOT a free-speech issue, GOD DAMN IT.

What this clueless congresscritter needs to learn is that spamming is NOT a free speech issue, it's a property rights issue.

MY computer, and MY fax machine, are not a public utility for "Make Money Fast" scammers to use at their convenience. I'm sure they'd love to break into my house and paint a billboard on my living room wall too, but I'm not about to let them do that.

If an advertiser wants to contact me, they can do it at their own expense by buying legitimate advertising placements.

This senator needs to be buried in an avalanche of letters.

-jcr

Re:There are some legal issues...

except for some very specific exceptions..

I bet some of those specific exceptions include pornographic pictures (I notice that my Fax Machine and my Snail Mail Box are not cluttered with Porn Pictures, but with non pornographic junk ads).

90% of the Spam in my inbox is something I consider to be pornographic.

Re:Spam & Radio Buttons

Bullshit.

Your niece probably doesn't get such spam because she simply hasn't been on the Internet long enough, or because she knows not to post her real e-mail address except when necessary. The spam-scrapers will pick up any e-mail address that they find on USENET or the Web, and they certainly do NOT go to the effort of checking whether the person at that address has visited porn sites before selling that list to a porn site.

It is entirely possible that DoubleClick somehow manages to correlate cookies with e-mail addresses, but if an email-list seller relied exclusively on data from DoubleClick he wouldn't get nearly enough addresses to advertise "1 MILLION E-MAIL ADDRESSES JUST $199.99!!!" Spammers get addresses from any source possible, not one particular source.

You sound disturbingly pro-spam, with your attempt to make it seem like it's the user's fault for recieving spam, and it gives you a nice ad-hominem attack against the original poster as well. The tone of your message implies: "Well, you wouldn't be getting all that spam if you weren't a PERVERTED PORN FIEND."

Spammers will spam anyone and everyone possible. They cannot and do not go to the effort of attempting to target their advertisements.
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Re:Write your Republicans

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will help on this issue. If you made Spam illegal how else would they meet attractive barely-legal teens in nearby colleges who need to meet men?

Re:I like this

Spam search engines, please take these two email addresses and imortalize them in your hallowed database of infamy --> [e-mail] [mailto] [e-mail] [mailto]

Write your Republicans

Well, if the democrats want to guard the spammer's right to cost me and my company money, I think I'll be calling my Republican senator, asking him to slap them around a little.

Of course, in a week I will be threatening vote for a democrat if he doesn't stop advocating internet censorship bills...

Re:I want an unlisted e-mail address

Whenever you get spammed by someone with an 800 number call... repetedly... give them some costs too...

Make sure to call from a pay phone; it costs more. Plus, if you call from home, they will have your phone number (even if you try to block it). I knew some people who would carry a list of 800 numbers and would call them from pay phones at the metro or grocery.

Re:Possible Flame-Bait

Aww but all those emails you send that people want still cost the ISP money.. If we are charging spammers, why not charge everyone? When it comes down to it, its all still just bits...

You seem to forget how the internet works. When i send my freind an email, he (in some small way) pays for it. But, it is traffic he wants. Plus, when he responds I pay a little bit. It evens out. Spammers abuse this.

Dictionary attacks to suck... sure punish network abusers..or write a program to reconize an attack coming in tryin to email every possible user and deny those IP's...u can figure sumthing out.. if it becomes illegal.. you really think that will stop spammers??

No, it won't stop them, but it does give me a legal recourse to stop it from happening again.

I never said people would'nt complain(i don't bulk email personally) but what i'm saying is why draw the line at "bulk" as opposed to 1 or more pieces... you set bulk at 400 pieces and wham! spammers will send 399..... again legislation is not an answer...

It is not a question of 'bulk', it is a question of permission.

See above a few comments.. spend more time beforehand securing your networks.. personally I've had much greated problems at work than our mailserver having problems.

So, it is *my* fault that spammers hose my servers? Thanks, pal.

[...]mostly part of the international voip network i deal with going down at times.. much more important than some spam in my inbox which i can ignore, filter or delete. I prefer a much unregulated interent... the more its regulated, the more its turned into AOL or other MAJOR controled online services where everything is sterile and nothing is new....(granted AOL gets ton of spam funny enough)

So, you don't deal with mail servers? You can't really comment on how big of a problem spam is to an ISP then, can you? You can say that your personal mail box does not have a problem, but you can't say that system/internet wide does not.

Re:Possible Flame-Bait

1. If they pay for email, you should have to pay for email you send anywhere as well and then we will be back to having a regulated postal service.

Well, there is a difference in the mail that spammers send and that I send. I send emails to people I know and who *want* to recieve email from me. Spammers send to who ever is on thier list. While the one spam I get does not cost me much it does over time; it also costs the ISPs who have to recieve and store the large numbers of unwanted emails.

2. E-mail is arguably free.. Its a system of networked servers designed to pass messages from one user to another.... they are using that.. why do you assume there is a level of personal privacy there?

Actually they are abusing that. The email is definatly *not* free (from an ISPs stand-point). When a spammer tries to dictionary attack your mails erver or sends a 100k spam to all 10K+ of your customers, you quickly find that cleaning up after a spammer is not cheap.

I can send an email to anyone! [e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail] ..

True, but if you are sending these people uncolicited bulk email, don't be shocked when they complain.

if we start charging people does this mean if i receive an email from someone i don't like I can now charge them for it?

If it is spam, yes.

I guess where do draw the line? is spam that infuriating to you? Personally it doens't bother me.. I have a few different pop accounts i use, with one i give out to people so i can read messages from and one for mailing lists(usually one per mailing list) and one for signing up for dumb stuff online where it sounds like i'm gonna get spammed for it...

Spam *is* that infuriating to an admin who has to come in to the shop at 4am to work on a mail server that has hung trying to process a boatload of spam.

What do you do about postal spam? Personally i can't stand that.. I get over 2 pounds a week of trash mail in my mailbox that some how now I AM RESPONSIBLE to recycle or throw away.. My name is Not Postal Customer, or Recipient... i've fought with my post office and left the junk mail in my mailbox.. that does nothing unfortunately.. those are the people who should be paying us for email..

I throw it away. It really does not cost me anything. the people sending it pay for it's delivery. It does not piss me off; that is because postal spam has yet to flood me to the point where I have to spend an hour destroying mail just to be able to open my PO box.

if you get some spam... thats reason #45628 the DELETE key was invented...

But, how does that solve the problem. Your box is just refilled the next day

I think theere are highly more pressing issues to worry about then some junk mail...

Well, I guess you have never worked on a high traffic mail server or had to deal with abuse issues. :)

Just my thoughts...perhaps losing some karma now :)

I hope you don't lose karma. Good luck.

Re:It's simple

Your right to free speech does not obligate me to provide you a forum in which to exercise that right.

It is free speech, but it needs to be accountable.

Advertising is slightly different than free speech.

If I was getting spam about overthrowing the American Government, fine... That's free speech.

But when I get spam advertising unsolicited crap products (low mortgages, cheap ink, infinite supply of viagra) that I just don't want it sucks.

Here are some precidents (sp?) for ending unsolicited spam.

1. Missouri now has a do-not-call list. It's enforced. If a telemarketer gets caught calling my house, they get in big trouble. It went into effect a week or so ago I believe and calls have ENDED! Honestly!

2. When I get credit card(and other advertisement) offers in the mail. There are a few rights that I have...
a. I know exactly where they came from.
b. I can "usually" get off the mailing list.

I'm not saying necessarily that it needs to be government regulated, but we need to design and bulid an email standard that will stop unwanted mail with tough to trace headers.

Once this sort of mail server is in place it should also have the option of only accepting mail from other mail servers that follow these standards.

No right to spend my money without my permission

Yes, everyone has a right to free speech. However, you do not have the right to spend someone else's money or use their resources without their permission. It is against the law for telemarketers to call you collect, or to send unsolicited faxes, or to send advertising postage due. If they want to spam me, that's fine - but if they are going to use my resources (bandwith, electricity, time, and hardware) I deserve to be reimbursed for my expenses.

Congress is once again proving how out of touch with reality they really are I wonder how much money the DMA (Direct Marketer's Alliance) contributed to Senator Wyden and Congressman Gephardt?

rights

First ammendment rights are not absolute. You cannot force me to listen to your speech. You don't have the right to charge me to listen to your message. You don't have the right to use my equiptment to show me your message.

Email is a push technology, not a pull technology. If someone posts it on Yahoo, or banner ads, you are making a request for it. If they stuff it in your in-box, then you have not requested it on your equiptment. This pop-up/under ads are questionable.

A pity for Wyden the courts have said otherwise

In CompuServe v Cyber Promotions the court stated quite clearly that the spammer's first amendment rights DO NOT trump the recipient's property rights. This was not a novel result, but was consistent with past rulings, including US Supreme Court rulings.

There's really nothing more to this than that - The Senator is wrong. Plainly, unambiguously, and inexcusably wrong. The only thing newsworthy about this is the degree to which the Senator has embarrassed himself.

That's not what the Supreme Court thinks

This [junkbusters.com] page explains the situation quite nicely.

Basically, a group of people involved in junk snailmailing claimed the same First Amendment right to spam. But in U.S. Supreme Court Appeal 397 U. S. 728, the Supreme Court ruled the exact opposite way. They said that "a man's home is his castle" and that if he doesn't want to receive junk mail, he has the right not to.

Sure, this ruling applied to snail mail, but it is similar enough to email that it is very likely that the Supreme Court would rule the same way here.

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DOOR!!

Re:Spam & Radio Buttons

[WARNING: This post may be excessively cynical.]

Really, what I am waiting for is ISP-approved spam. If the right to send spam is legally upheld, I think this is what awaits us in the future:

- Major ISPs set up "commercial email facilitation services."

- Spammer contacts the ISP. Spammer signs up for the service, and for $0.0X per email address the ISP guarantees delivery to the end user. How many users does home.com have? Or Earthlink?

- ISP makes a bundle.

- We all start getting 50 approved spams every day (the ISP would be smart enough not to redistribute pr0n spam)

- ISP rewrites the TOS so you can't complain about it or opt out.

- ISP monkeys with subject and sender headers to defeat mail filters.

- ISP defends their actions by claiming that spam was costing them $X million a year and this is the only way they can recover costs.

Obnoxious? Yes. But with the huge money to be made I think it's only a matter of time before things go this route. Non-spamming ISPs will become rare... only small ISPs will want to refuse the income, because their small user base won't make it worth backlash. But as more and more small ISPs get bought out or go under, there will be fewer and fewer places to run...

There are some legal issues...

... in the history of Title 47, Section 227 [cornell.edu] of the US Code (the anti-fax spam law). The legal issues are nearly identical - the anti-fax law prohibited unsolicited faxes selling things because they shift the cost of unwelcome advertising to an unwilling recipient. The cast that tested this that I'm aware of is Destination Ventures, Ltd. v. FCC, 46 F.3d 54 (9th Cir. 1995), which addressed the constitutionality of 42 227 under the 1st Amendment. It noted, specifically, that under prevailing Supreme Court case law at the time (and it hasn't changed substantially), such restrictions must be very specific - in this case, unsolicited faxes advertising goods or services - and must be the only way of accomplishing the public good the law is intended to accomplish. In particular, it noted that unsolicited faxes not advertising commercial services, such as political messages, were protected by the 1st Amendment, even if they cost an unwilling recipient money. I believe the principal is that if you make a fax machine (or email server) readily available to the general public, there is some responsibility to accept whatever gets sent to it - except for some very specific exceptions..

In any event, it seems likely the same legal thinking will apply to any anti-spam law. Since most email spam is, in fact, commercial ads, that would appear to be something that can be banned. Chain letters (that are not other wise illegal, like Ponzi scams), political messages, even ones asking for donations, and many other kinds of email are going to be protected, in the end. Or so it looks to me.

Re:You opt out, You opt-in, you do the Hokey Pokey

You have just raised the best argument against allowing spam to date: specifically, that you have property rights concerning the data storage device space which you are leasing from your ISP.

An e-mail box is not a USPS mail box. It is a privately owned data file which is leased for the purpose of being able to exchange data with others. Your example of putting a billboard on somebody's lawn which faces their window is particularilly cogent.

Opt-out is a whack-a-mole game, because when you tell an advertiser you don't want to hear from them, they can come back as another company in a week anyway. Most spammers are fly-by-night scams anyway.

The First Amendment does not establish the right to send me e-mail.

Re:individual vs corporate

Its not congresspeople - its case law, specifically its:

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company [118 U.S. 394 (1886)], Read more here [iiipublishing.com]

And please, for the sake of us all (literally) would you Yankees *PLEASE* do something about this... the rest of the world is watching your government get more and more corrupt and your corporations using your (wonderfull) bill-of-rights as tools of imperialism.

an interesting perspective

And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day.

Actually, opting-out usually doesn't prevent SPAM. For the simple reason that if you send back an opt-out email, you are now a "verified email address" and I'm sure you will show up in the next edition of their "3 billion Verified Email Addresses!!!!" CD-ROM. Which you can buy for the low, low price of....

You opt out, You opt-in, you do the Hokey Pokey

This is why I don't opt-out, I just ignore. Most of my spam isn't from anything remotely resembling a viable business.

Screw postage, that doesn't keep the crap out of my two physical mailboxes. It's tresspassing, pure and simple and has nothing at all to do with "freedom of speech".

If I were to walk across Taco's lawn to put an advertisement on his front porch, he could bar me with a simple No-Tresspassing or No-Solicitors sign. If I disregard it he can charge me with tresspassing.

Since email is physical and takes up space somewhere, which I have paid for the use of, I should be able to post a simple No-Tresspassing or No-Solicitors sign, effectively, and they keep out. Only those I welcome into/onto my property should be allowed.

--
All your .sig are belong to us!

Advertising is NOT protected speech

Luckily, even illustrious personages like U.S. Senators can make wrong statements. Since email spam is advertising, it is not protected speech,and therefore not covered by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

In fact, the U.S. has recognized over the years that advertising must be controlled - thus we U.S. citizens are protected by "Truth in Advertising" laws.

The real question is who bought off this particular U.S. senator? The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has its hooks into a lot of state representatives. For instance, here in Colorado, someone proposed a bill to make scumsucking telemarketers use a state "opt-out" list. Colorado citizens could register phone numbers in the opt-out list, and scumsucking telemarketers would be required to *not* call those phone numbers, under penalty of law.

The president of the Colorado State Senate is an ex-DMA-lobbyist, so he used parliamentary procedure to table the bill - it essentially wouldn't even be voted on. A mass outpouring of outrage against evil telemarketers got it back on the table, and it passed.

There can be no compromise on email spam - email spam is theft, and must be eliminated. Email spammers are theives and must be punished withing the limits of the law.

Opt-Out is a game like Whack-a-Mole.

Opt-Out is like the Whack-a-Mole game, only far worse.

When you opt out, you tell the sender that they have a responsive person. That makes you more valuable to them. They take your name off the one list to which you opted out, but they sell your name to at least 1,000 other lists to which you have not opted out.

If you were to opt out of each of the 1000 lists, they would sell your name each time to 1000 others, so you would eventually be on 1,000,000 lists. These numbers are an estimate, but are not far wrong.

Opt-out is an invitation to spending your whole life as an opt-outer.

Re:Spam & Radio Buttons

It is NOT an advertiser's legal right to contact you. Foremost among our rights is the right to be left alone.

The problem with spam that most people (especially lawmakers) just don't get is that spam is VERY different from traditional snail-mail advertising. It ends up shifting the costs of advertising to those RECEIVING the advertising and to those in the chain of distribution (ISPs). These two aspects are significant. In fact, this cost-shifting was one of the primary rationales behind outlawing unsolicited commercial facsimile transmissions (remember fax machines?). This law is 47 USC sec. 227 - $500 fine per violation.

So I ask you, why should advertisers be allowed to make the public pay for their advertising simply because it is possible to advertise electronically? Remember: The corollary to someone's 1st Amendment right to speak is someone else's right to not be subjected to the speech.

Re:You opt out?

Eh, getting rid of spam is easy.

1) Buy your own domain. People crapflood *@hotmail, *@aol, *@yahoo, etc etc just to find addresses by what doesn't bounce. Cracking dictionaries work wonders at guessing usernames.

(I have *never* gotten spam on the domain I use for my personal email, after about a year and a half.)

2) Don't use it for frivolous things. Big companies are usually smart enough not to spam you, you should be able to order from amazon or whatever without too much trouble.

3) Let your friends know that if they sign you up for mailing lists you are going to beat them down with a sock full of nickels.

How people expect spammers to not find their yahoo mail account is beyond me...

Re:Spam & Radio Buttons

It is their legal right to contact you

It is NOT their legal right to send me unsolicited links to pornography and a graphic description of exactly what I'll find via said link, which I get on a daily basis. They have no idea whether I'm an adult or not. What happens when my 4 year old daughter is 10, gets her own email address, and receives this crap? I'll tell you what happens: I'll put the SOBs in jail for solicitation of a minor - assuming I can track them down.

I wonder if someone could get away with suing them for sexual harassment? Hell, it works everywhere else. Tell a female coworker she looks nice in a dress, or tell some dirty joke within earshot of the wrong person, and you could wind up in court. I'd say links to "young teen sluts waiting to suck you dry" constitutes sexual harassment, wouldn't you?

As for other spam: Imagine if companies sent you advertisements via COD, only you're forced to pay. Mail man shows up at the door: "Here you go sir. 20 more ads. Charges are $5, we'll deduct it from your checking account whether you like it or not." Imagine if the palm reader at the 900 number was able to call YOU, and if you answer the phone, you're automatically charged $10. In reality, this is exactly what spammers do to you. You're paying (Internet access charges) for them to spam you. There are laws against this in the real world.

Re:an interesting perspective

The Help section at http://mail.yahoo.com provides the following information about what NOT to do with SPAM. I really would think twice about "opting out" after reading this:

What should I not do with spam? Never respond to unsolicited email/spam. To the individuals who send spam, one "hit" among thousands of mailings is enough to justify the practice. Never respond to the spam email's instructions to reply with the word "remove." This is a ploy to get you to react to the email and alerts the sender that your email address is open and available to receive mail, which greatly increases its value. If you reply, your address may be placed on more lists, resulting in more spam. Never click on a URL or web site address listed within a spam. This could alert the site to the validity of your email address, potentially resulting in more spam. Never sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from spam lists. Although some of these sites may be legitimate, more often than not, they are address collectors. The legitimate sites are ignored (or exploited) by the spammers; the address collection sites are owned by them. In both cases, your address is recorded and valued more highly because you have just identified that your address is active.