US antispam bill is death to anonymity

John R. Levine johnl at iecc.com
Sat Nov 22 20:27:47 EST 2003


>This bill makes it a crime to use any false or misleading information
>in a domain name or email account application, and then send an email.

No, it only makes it illegal to use false or misleading information to
send commercial e-mail.  That's a rather important distinction.

Anonymous advertising is a contradiction.  The point of an ad is to
get people to buy something from you, but they can only buy that
something if they can find you.

Don't take my word for what the bill says, read it yourself.  It's not
that long.  There's plenty of things wrong with it, but outlawing all
anonymous mail isn't one of them.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web



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