On Mon, May 26, 1997 at 02:21:33AM -0500, Phil Howard wrote:
Or has anyone considered the effect of this law on spammers outside of the United States?
Yes, many people have. Various answers include: - The Smith amendment doesn't even address the physical location of the machine which originated the message; it goes after the company itself. - A number of countries already have legislation which serves to block spammers, such as Germany's strict "unfair advertising" statutes. - Many countries have poor connectivity, and could not possibly hope to survive the amount of bandwidth used by spammers. - If all spammers move to one country, filtering becomes easier. My personal favorite is the simple fact that while this law may not stop 100% of what we currently consider spam, it will seriously reduce the amount without making it any harder to try other methods to stop the rest. ---------========== J.D. Falk <jdfalk@cybernothing.org> =========--------- | "A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points... | | but it is by no means the most interesting." | | -- Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who in "Doctor Who and | | the Time Warrior" by Robert Holmes (BBC, 1974) | ----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----