[arin-discuss] ARIN billing practice

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Jeremy Anthony Kinsey wrote:
> Almost every spam I get contains something that "complies" with that 
> "regulation".  I really do not want to argue the semantics of a law that 
> remains relatively ineffective and unenforceable as it is written.  It 
> does not outlaw or make illegal the act of sending UCE.  What it does is 
> says if you are going to do it, you need to accommodate those that do 
> not want to receive such UCE by way of providing a removal system or 
> valid contact address.  As such, most of these places do.
> 

A removal system that does not work to actually remove anyone is
criminal fraud, and it is very easy to prove that many of these removal
systems mostly are ignored by the spammers.  Moreover most spams are 
criminal in nature, they advertise fraudulent products or schemes.

There is PLENTY for the FBI to work with, and the FBI has brought
many successful actions against spammers in the past.  In addition
many spams are front ends for identity theft rings and investigation
of the spams can lead back to these rings.

Claims that the law in weak and unenforceable are bogus, and merely
serve to make people feel that there's nothing that they can do about
the problem.  As a result they don't try, they don't complain to the
FBI through http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx, they don't
complain to their elected representatives, who are mostly ignorant of
the spam problem (other than knowing it exists) they just delete the
spams either by software (spamassassin) or with their keyboards.

This deletes valuable evidence that can be used to shut these people
down.  It removes pressure from politicians to push the AG's and feds
to devote resources to the problem, and removes pressure from the
politicians to fine tune the law.  It is like arguing that since
bankers are going to steal money if possible, that we might as well
not bother pushing in more strict banking regulations.

Jeremy, if you don't want to fight spam then fine.  But don't denigrate
the work of those who do.  All you accomplish is making their work
harder, and the problem worse.

Ted