At 03:13 PM 3/27/98 EST, StahlfeldE wrote:
>The Seattle Times, 3/26/98, page B1, said Gov. Locke signed an anti-spam bill
>that, according to the paper, "makes it a violation for spammers to send e-
>mail messages that hide their point of origin, mask the transmission path, or
>contain misleading information in the message's subject line." The bill
>prohibits sending e-mail to an electronic mail address that the sender knws,
>or has reason to know, is held by a Washington resident, putting the
burden on
>the sender to find out. Individuals who receive such an e-mail could collect
>up to $500 per violation.

As much as I dislike spam, I must say I dislike this law, along with other
attempts by government to control the Internet.

Not that it is likely to hold up. I do believe the federal government has
jurisdiction over such issues and any case brought under this law will simply
result in that being pointed out.

And even if it were to hold up, or if we had a federal law, spammers would
just move their e-mail operations overseas.

Along with misguided attempts to control the net, I dislike attempts to do so
which display no attempt to learn the net...

The Federal government, for instance, bans the export of certain types of
encryption technology. This means the secure shell I use to access the
machine
at MIT that hosts my website was written by the English subsidiary of a US
company. One downloads it by FTP from an English site, nicely skirting the
rather impotent attempt by the US to control this technology (the math behind
such encryption is available in the literature anyway, making it even more
stupid). The US has been unable to get governments of countries like Great
Britain to impose a similar ban because 1) they recognize it's futile and
2) the US has artificially created a market in which US companies can't
directly
compete and therefore can't dominate - rare in the software world.




- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net