[WSIS CS-Plenary] Spam as an issue

[Jonathan Cave]

At 12:58 01/02/2005, Fede wrote:
>On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 10:14 +0100, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> > So you think that there is no need for global regulation of spam?[...]
> > it will just let you lost in cross-border legal procedures while the
> > spammer has all the time to finish the job and disappear.
>
>I have a feeling that you forget that there is a reason why those pesky 
>"cross-border legal procedures" exist: to keep citizens of country A under 
>their own legal framework, instead of having them subject to country B's 
>laws. Those legal systems are different for a reason.

That's not wholly accurate - there are mutual recognition and 
choice-of-venue provisions. In general, a citizen of A can be prosecuted 
for an offence committed in B if the act is also an offence in A, though 
there are important practical questions about who bears the burden of 
prosecution, where the trial takes place and how law officers from one 
jurisdiction get evidence from another. The Indymedia case lately discussed 
in this list comes to mind...

>Of course, spam is a problem. Over 70% of my incoming mail is spam, and 
>I'm not happy with all the spam from spam-friendly countries, but maybe 
>that's the price we need to pay to avoid the current tendency towards 
>blanket "harmonization" of everything.

Co-ordination and local versions of common standards are attractive 
alternatives to harmonisation. Things don't have to be the same, just aware 
of and sympathetic to each other.

But political will is very important: a jurisdiction that has a positive 
'trade balance from its citizens' spamming activities abroad will be no 
more likely to cooperate in effective spam control than a jurisdiction that 
is a net seller in eCommerce would be to support Internet taxes or duties. 
On the other hand, many of these 'independent' jurisdiction find 
international pressures a handy way to win domestic battles (the history of 
the WTO telecom agreement being an exact case in point).

>Not to mention that spam will stop dead on its track the moment the 
>majority of people are educated enough to stop falling for it. Calling for 
>better and deeper education strategies for all is something everyone could 
>probably agree on as a goal we want WSIS to concentrate on. It would 
>eliminate not only spam, but a lot of other problems, and create a lot of 
>opportinities. More efficiency in getting unpleasant people behind bars 
>doesn't have nearly as positive a ring to it.

As far as I am aware, the *vast* majority of people are already aware of at 
least the current types of spam. But for spammers sending millions of 
messages a day the enterprise is profitable if even a tiny minority 
respond. It is also a bit unfair to say 'falling for it' as though spam and 
fraud were one and the same. True, much of it is phishing for identity 
theft opportunities - but the majority to date consists of unsolicited 
commercial offers - if people want to buy these goods, they will. If spam 
is a cheap way to reach these customers, it will be used. Why should spam 
be easier to stop than junk mail or junk faxes? The public interest arises 
because the costs imposed on others 
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3352111.stm) are very large compared 
to those experienced by the spammers. Unless the education solution is much 
more effective than any other education programme has ever been, it won't 
make a difference. By the way, is there any evidence that spamming is 
inversely correlated with either general education or Information Society 
readiness indicators?

Jonathan

>         Fede
>--
>GnuPG Public Key: gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-key BD02C6E0
>Key Fingerprint: 04F4 08C5 14B7 2C3D DB21  ACF8 6CF5 0B0C BD02 C6E0
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20050201/99678578/attachment.html