UK bans spam messages

[QC]

The UK has made spam a criminal offence to try to stop the flood of unsolicited messages.

Under the new law, spammers could be fined £5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury....

Earlier this month Italy imposed tough regulations to fine spammers up to 90,000 euros (£66,000) and impose a maximum prison term of three years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3120628.stm

[Ashcroft Kutcher]

1. but how are they going to get generic viagra

would somebody please think of the children!!!

[Don_G]

2. The British Are Sensible

However, I wonder if the spammers are going to move their operations off-shore.

[Robb]

3. Too bad

I was looking forward to more suggestions about my breast and penis size.

I'm not sure passing a law will do any good, unless it's got sharp teeth AND a dedicated enforcement body. Sort of like passing a statute that makes it illegal for the wind to come from the south, at this point.

[reprobate]

4. This needs an international treaty.

If a treaty is agreed to, then there will be no trouble with spammers going offshore. They could then be followed to any country.

I think that's the only way that they will be stopped.

[Cooley Hurd]

5. Something has to be done...

I wish they could do the same here in the US...

[DeathvadeR]

15. give me a break....

god forbid if you have to check a few boxes and hit one button everytime you check your email. besides the majority of the spam you recieve you probably signed up for when registering for access to a website or regestered some software.

Making spam illigal is fuqed up for anyone who wants to sell something without being gang raped by the big boys.

[LifeDuringWartime]

6. evil spam

its estimated that in a few years there will be much more spam email than normal email

[slackmaster]

7. That's already true for me

Both at home and at work. I get about 2-3 spams for every non-spam email.

[DeathvadeR]

17. Its easy to elimante this from happening

Create a hotmail account and give that one out to all those that are not close to you.

let hotmail recieve a load full. It's your fault for giving away your address.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

8. Donning the mantle suggested by my name...

Let me just ask: Why are spammers banned but not unsolicited snail mail?

Before you argue that spam causes costs to the user who receives it, think about the costs of rubbish removal of the tonnes and tonnes of circulars and so on that are sent every day. Who pays for those costs?

I hate spam, and I wish it was never invented, but I hate unsolicited snail mail more. At least spam doesn't involve the destruction of forests in order to make paper to print it on.

Second, do the spam laws also affect free speech? What if a someone wanted to send out an email calling for the removal of Tony Blair? Is that excluded because it is protected speech? Or does this law apply to all spam whether it is political or commercial in nature?

In other words, is spam really that much worse than the other methods of unsolicited advertising, and does the term "spam" include unsolicited political messages?

It seems to me that making spam illegal does more harm than good.

[QC]

9. How much spam do you get?

[Devils Advocate NZ]

10. Hundreds. What's your point?

I also get dozens of mailers in my letter box.

[dfong63]

11. i agree, ban them both

[Boomer]

13. A difference of scale

I only get 3-4 unsolicited snail mail letters on any given day, and mostly from industries that mirror my interests -- internet/web offers, computer equipment, pet supplies. Annoying, but manageable, and that level has held steady for years. Advertisers can't afford the postage to send unlimited letters to people who probably aren't interested in what they have to sell. And if I take the time to write, I can actually be removed from their mailing list (unless it's Paralyzed Veterans of America, which completely ignored my request to take my deceased mother's name off their mailing list and added MINE to the list so I now get two solicitations instead of one).

But I receieve 100-200 spam messages PER DAY, for every imaginable product, not to mention extremely graphic and offensive porn, and the number has been growing steadily as my email address is distributed to more and more databases. Since the cost of email spam is so low, advertisers can afford to broadcast to every email address on the planet in hopes that a miniscule percent respond. There is no practical limit on their barrage and no way to get off their lists.

If not for a variety of filters that I've applied to my mailbox, I wouldn't be able to function. As it is, at least a dozen messages a day get through the filters and the occassional legitimate message is probably lost.

--Boomer

[DeathvadeR]

18. word

Think of how much damage snail mail ads do to the forests. My girlfriend must get a fuqin victoria secrets cataloge ever 2 days. Its insane.

[spinbaby]

12. Well meaning, but...

Because ISPs ban them, spammers are already VERY good at hiding themselves. They use free trial accounts with ISPs and then abandon them or they funnel their spam through other people's computers. I'm sure most U.K. spam will now be coming from overseas.

[DeathvadeR]

14. Spam is illegal but those Giant fuqing pop ups are ok?

Only the big boys get to play once again.

[htuttle]

16. Just hold on one moment. I happen to like spam