US antispam bill is death to anonymity

[J.A. Terranson]

On 23 Nov 2003, John R. Levine wrote:

> >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.

I believe we are missing an important point: anonymizers can be used (against
their AUPs) to send "anonymous advertising".  In real life, this happens a
*lot*.  Sure, we know the beneficiary site, however, this law will impact the
innocent anonymizer in this case, and not the scum who actually caused the
email to be sent out in the first place.

I have several defunct mixmaster addresses which bounce *hundreds* of
attempts to sue them for spam evey week.  This is a real problem.

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org

Father, you are a great and mighty God. Help our governments to remember the
lessons of our history and to appreciate the purpose of your son Jesus. Teach
our representatives not to be so arrogant as to speak in one way, but doing
another, for surely this not the way of truth. Help us to understand that
your will is not death but life, not the darkness of hatred but the light of
friendship in Christ. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Merle Harton, Jr.

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