[LINK] Will governments grasp the nettle on spam

[Eleanor Lister]

Howard Lowndes wrote:
> <hfl>
> I commented the other day about governments having to get more
> involved in fighting spam.  It looks like I am not the only one with
> that thought.
> </hfl>
>
> http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36823
>
> [...]
> As just about every security company will be saying, more effort will
> be needed to tackle the spam problem this year if the rising spam
> trend continues. For example, the lowest spam level in December - a
> big month for spam - was massively high at 84.95%.
>
> CTO of SoftScan Diego d'Ambra said in a press release that "if spam
> distribution levels continue to rise at the rate we have seen over the
> last few months, then I believe that by the end of 2007 governments
> worldwide will be obliged to enforce international anti-spam laws."
>
> SoftScan also announced the top five virus families for December,
> phishing being top dog at 69%, followed by tibs at 12.89% netsky at
> 4.00% stration at 3.05% and bagle at 2.56%.
>

i believe that spam is very welcome to the corporate software providers,
as it will generate the following scenario:

- spam becomes so prevalent that email becomes hard to use

- a new email protocol is devised, not because it is more secure, but
because it requires that the source is registered in a corporate
database or be considered malformed by the email handler and discarded

- this gives the corporates a revenue stream registering email sources,
and a further per-message charge per customer

- the days of free and open communications are over, the mechanisms of
social control are firmly in place, and making money

- John & Jane don't care if they pay $10 a month for email, they see it
like paying postage for letters

- many obvious spammers go to jail, except for ones based in countries
that don't care, or are using relays

- a new version of the protocol with digital signatures is put up, which
costs even more for the poor bloody customer

- the new spammers are the corporates, who flood us with targeted spam,
just as bad as before, only the poor bloody customer is paying an arm or
a leg to be spammed

- it isn't called spam anymore, that's evil interference with your
rights; this is multi-level marketing, from reputable firms!

hoo-bloody-ray.

(feeling savage today, just cleaned out my in-box)

grrrrrrrrrr,
    EL

------------
Eleanor Ashley Lister
South Sydney Greens
http://ssg.nsw.greens.org.au
webmistress at ssg.nsw.greens.org.au