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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Murkowski anti-spam bill could be a problem for ISPs
Why not voice these complaints to Senator Murkowski? He has the following
text on his webpage:
NOTE: Senator Murkowski strongly encourages the
Internet community to make specific recommendations or
comments about the legislation. Please send them to this
address: [email protected]
On Sat, 24 May 1997, Pete Kruckenberg wrote:
]On Sat, 24 May 1997, Deepak Jain wrote:
]
]>>> * The FTC can discipline misbehaving ISPs.
]>>> * Various penalties for unsigned ads, for ISPs that don't provide
]>>> filtering, for spammers who continue to send ads after receiving a remove.
]>
]> Don't these two lines cause everyone a little bit of grief?
]>
]> 1) What can the FTC do to discipline an ISP?
]> 2) Why should ISPs be required to filter? Wouldn't it make sense that
]> customers would decide if they want to make a purchase based on *if*
]> filtering were available?
]
]I see serious problems with this as well. First, it is inconsistent with
]the way that other "unwanted" messages. For example, your postmaster is
]not required to filter through your mail and remove any junk mail (usually
]"tagged" as "bulk mail"). And yes, you are paying for that mail to get to
]you as a US tax payer.
]
]Second, I think it opens huge liabilities for an ISP. What happens, for
]example, if an ISP mistakenly filters out an important legitamate message
]because it met the conditions of a junk message? Or, if an ISP fails to
]filter out all junk mail because of a failure of the filtering system or
]because the junk mail is not properly tagged?
]
]On the other side, I think there are huge liabilities that come up from
]the people who might *want* spam (obviously there must be people who
]respond to spam), as well as whatever rights spammers may have to
]communicate their message. It stinks of a ripe first amendment lawsuit
]when you talk about the carriers of the message completely shutting off
]communications of this sort. Of course, I'm not an attorney.
]
]The thing that most concerns me is that the easiest target to hit is the
]ISP. The customer isn't doing anything except complaining, and the spammer
]can pull up roots quickly and move on without leaving tracks. Only the
]ISP, who bears the brunt of responsibility and liability, is involved
]enough and is permanent enough that if fines are levied or lawsuits filed,
]they're the most likely (if not the only) ones to get hit.
]
]Ironically, the ISP is actually the one who "suffers" the least, as long
]as they are protected against spam mail relaying and their customers
]aren't the ones doing the spamming. The costs of filtering, and potential
]legal costs related to this bill are far higher than any current costs of
]spam (some bandwidth and disk space).
]
]For these reasons, as an ISP, I'm very fearful of legislation like this. I
]would prefer that the ISP be completely removed from the loop, and that
]the legislation focus strictly on ways that Internet users can do their
]own spam filtering (even potentially having a user-specified server-side
]filter, so they don't have to download the spam messages), and leave it at
]that.
]
]Pete Kruckenberg
]VP Engineering
]inQuo, Inc.
][email protected]
]
]
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