End Spam by criminalizing the purchase of their products?

[:) Smiley]

Well, you raise a good point, the punishment ought to fit the crime. Therefore, ers should be forced to do the following:

Use a penis shrinking kit.
Transfer their profits to shady Nigerian bank accounts.
Get followed 24/7 by a live webcam.
Accept loans with a 200% annual interest rate.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
That's hard to show.

The burden of proof is on law enforcement to show the person would have committed the crime anyway.

[:) Smiley]

If law enforcement offered for sale the same product at the same price with the same sales pitch as a spammer, and had it spammed to the same emails, you'd have the burden of proof.

[Boris Godunov]

So you would have the law enforcement officers spamming people with ads identical to spammer e-mails in a "sting" aimed at cutting down spam?

You do see how daft this is, yes?

I'm still waiting to hear the legal rationalization for punishing people for buying a legal product from a legal vendor.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by faded glory
Then, there are these things called filters and a good ISP I have one, perhaps you should too. Rarely do I get it. And when I do, theres this 'delete' button that comes in handy :P

You don't get it.

1. I need to pay for connection to download the crap to my e-mail client for the filters to work. This is absurd even on the surface. Even if I have unlimted connection time, spam still takes up bandwidth.

2. ISP's can only block spam when they get to their servers. This again means $$$ and bandwidth. Why should they pay for this junk in the first place?

Originally posted by faded glory
These this is what saddens me. The enormous amount of threat used when discussing this topic. Same old, Same old. Ya'll are a bunch of whores. Just a bit of common sense and 10 minutes of download time would prevent you from getting any spam.

Spammers are parasites. People hate parasites. Animals and plants hate parasites. They get killed, squashed, stomped on. Same for spammers.

Originally posted by faded glory
Its all a mute point. Spam will never be illegal or it will never be stopped in the general sense. So stop wasting your time talking about it.

That's what they all had said about smoking.

[Dr. A. Cula]

Ahem...

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990222

...and the conclusion:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990223

[Spiffor]

Faded Glory:
Any e-mail consumes a tiny amount of bandwidth (and hence costs money) both to the emitter and to the reciever. Spamming companies make a profit from spamming, but they have operating costs. When individuals spam thanks to an 'unlimited account' or somesuch, the cost is real, depite being bore by the ISP rather than by the spammer.

Same goes for recievers of the spam. They have to pay bandwidth to recieve it and then only filter it (you can't filter something you havene't recieved). Again, this work might be done by the ISPs, who have to suffer from the occuring costs.

Because of spam, ISPs also can provide less bandwidth than without for other activities. Spam can really kill some E-mail providers as it can hurt their (limited) bandwidth greatly.

All of this for the small profit of individuals too greedy to understand their activity hurts society as a whole. Like you.

Besides, spam can very well become illegal. Its techniques are illegal in the EU (a European is not allowed to take an email-adress from the internet for commercial prospection). Since it heavily relies on false advertisement, it can be punished for this reason as well. If the US takes the same progressive steps than the EU wrt personal data protection, you and you spammer colleagues will have to move to the Caiman Islands to perform your dirty job. And this might happen sooner than you'd think.

[Kuciwalker]

Viruses are relatively easy to protect against. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be illegal.

[Shi Huangdi]

Another problem with filters is that they sometimes do block out needed e-mails. There was a problem awhile back when AOL's spam filter filtered out e-mails from Harvard University telling the people they were accepted for early decision.

[Kuciwalker]

I heard about that. That must suck.

Of course, if you're using AOL, you deserve it.

[Mercator]

Check out the website of the ePrivacy Group, and specifically the PDF document Spam by the Numbers (if you don't believe spam is a problem).

Almost half of all e-mail that is being sent is spam, and the number is still rising. Don't tell me that doesn't affect bandwidth, and especially for something that the majority of people don't even want.

Plus, while with snailmail people still have a choice (at least in Holland, you can put a sticker on your mailbox if you don't want any unsolicited mail), and with phone calls, it's also possible to be removed.

With spam e-mail there is no such thing. You can't choose not to receive spam. Especially so because there is no definite way to distinguish them. Even the smartest spam filters can't be 100% precise, simply because spammers constantly change what their e-mails look like (if only things like deliberately misspelling words).

The least that should happen is something like what you can do with your phone number. That is, have the ability to unlist your e-mail address.
I believe there already are such initiatives, but of course, the vast majority of spam doesn't come from anyone participating in such initiatives.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dr. A. Cula
Ahem...

Wouldn't that be great?