All spam laws are useless, but at least, they make the public aware of the problem, which, in turn, might reduce the amount of suckers giving profit to slick spammers.
But
new spam law signed by Bush is worse than useless: it is dangerous. It is basically a opt-out law, which allows spam if it includes a way of removing yourself (from where? If you receive spam from the same guy through 200 open relays, you have to remove yourself 200 times?). Besides, it states that pornographic mail should be clearly labelled. Big deal. Why doesn't it provide a way of labelling clearly hoaxes and scams? Just put [SCAM] on the subject line, and, well, if you fall for it, that's your problem.
It gets even worse:
It will override some tougher state laws, such as one in California that would prevent all unsolicited commercial e-mail, and will prohibit consumer lawsuits, as some states currently allow
Is it just me or this smells foul?
The bill has also been mentioned at
internetnews, who compares it with Virginia's anti-spam law and
NewsIsFree. No weblog seems to have picked it up yet.
