Goodies to Go ™
March 19, 2001–Newsletter #122
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Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,
Did you hear…
As Cisco Systems lays-off five percent of its workforce,
AOL/Time Warner is wondering what downturn
everyone’s talking about. The multimedia giant has just
signed some big advertisers and reported that
subscriptions are up over 28 million. Gosh.
Did you know that if a share price drops below a certain
point for a certain amount of time, it could simply be
dropped from the charts? In fact, over 900 such
droppings have occurred. Once the stock is under a buck
for 30 days, the head goes to the chopping block. The
latest to fight the dropping scare is Autoweb.com. The
IPO has asked the NASDAQ to review the decision. The
review should start inside of 45 days.
Two hackers, “darkman” and “xor37h” have found a big
hole in older IBM e-commerce server software.
Furthermore the hackers have made their discovery
public. With the right tools and the right Web addresses,
persons can exploit the hole and do just about anything
they want while in the server.
Have you heard of the “Naked Wife” virus? Guess where
experts think it started…the U.S. Military. Oh man, will
that person be cleaning garbage cans for a long while
once found out.
Now onto today’s topic…
I opened a piece of Spam mail this morning and got this:
Under Bill s.1618 Title III passed by the 105th U.S.
Congress this mail cannot be considered Spam as long as
we include contact information and removal instructions
for removing you from our mailing list. To be removed
from our mailing list, reply with REMOVE in the subject
heading and your email address in the body, and include
complete address and/or domain to be removed.
Have you received an email with one of these statements
yet?
Let me see if I can translate it for you.
We are going to send you a ton of email whether you
like it or not. Get off our backs. If you don’t like it,
get yourself off our lists.
Does that sound about right?
Well then! I guess I’d better read it. The information
contained herein must be of some importance since the
information has the A-OK under federal law.
Wait. Federal law?
If I remember my Saturday morning School House Rock
episode correctly, for something to become a law, it has
to be passed by both the House AND the Senate plus a
really important person has to sign it.
It must be a law then, right? The Spammers are using it.
They wouldn’t lie, would they?
It would seem that enough time has passed for the
president to sign the bill into law. It’s been two years.
We’re in the 107th Congress now. I’ve never heard of a
law allowing people to Spam me.
Hey – wait a minute. Maybe there never was a Bill
S1618. I mean, it’s not a law.
Darn.
There was a bill S1618 back in 1998. It passed by a 99-0
voice vote. It’s called the “Anti-Slamming Amendments
Act”. There was even a House of Representatives equal
to it, HR3888. It also passed.
The Senate version of the bill stated that S1618 was, “To
amend the Communications Act of 1934 to improve the
protection of consumers against `slamming’ by
telecommunications carriers, and for other purposes.”
Hey! Wait a minute.
“Slamming”?
Is the Congress a bunch of really poor spellers…like me?
I thought this was a bill about Spamming.
Well, it is. It’s just not the main push of the bill. You
don’t get to “Spamming” until title three. It’s right in
there between “Switchless Resellers” and “Miscellaneous
Provisions”. The Spamming section is an amendment to
the amendment. There were actually four versions of bill
S1618. The Spamming section didn’t show up until the
third incarnation.
(Source: http://thomas.loc.gov)
But still, it was passed. It was passed containing the
Spamming amendment so it’s on the books so we all have
to receive the Spam emails sent to us by people we don’t
even know as long as the Spammers follow S1618 Title
III outlined below:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
TITLE III-SPAMMING
SEC. 301. REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO TRANSMISSIONS OF
UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL.
(a) INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN TRANSMISSIONS-
(1) IN GENERAL- A person who transmits an unsolicited
commercial electronic mail message shall cause to appear
in each such electronic mail message the information
specified in paragraph (2).
(2) COVERED INFORMATION- The following information shall
appear at the beginning of the body of an unsolicited
commercial electronic mail message under paragraph (1):
(A) The name, physical address, electronic mail address,
and telephone number of the person who initiates
transmission of the message.
(B) The name, physical address, electronic mail address,
and telephone number of the person who created the content
of the message, if different from the information under
subparagraph (A).
(C) A statement that further transmissions of unsolicited
commercial electronic mail to the recipient by the person
who initiates transmission of the message may be stopped
at no cost to the recipient by sending a reply to the
originating electronic mail address with the word `remove’
in the subject line.
(b) ROUTING INFORMATION- All Internet routing information
contained within or accompanying an electronic mail message
described in subsection (a) must be accurate, valid
according to the prevailing standards for Internet protocols,
and accurately reflect message routing.
(c) EFFECTIVE DATE- The requirements in this section shall
take effect 30 days after the date of enactment of this Act.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In other words, include the paragraph that started off
this newsletter and offer a viable method to getting
your name off of the Spammer’s list. Do that, and you
can Spam away because technically what you’re sending
cannot be considered Spam.
This sounds too bad to be true.
Great! Just great! Now I have to allow a ton of Spam to
come flying through my front door and I have to read it
all because the Spammers have the power of the U.S.
Government behind them. It just cheeses me off. I
mean…it…
Wait. What’s this?
S1618 died in committee?
That means that it’s null and void? It’s dead?
It doesn’t have any power?
Oh. The Spammer never bothered to tell me that.
Never mind.
I’ll just go delete that piece of mail.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
(The death of S1618 in committee:
Source: http://techlawjournal.com/telecom/81022.htm)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That’s that. Thanks for reading.
Joe Burns, Ph.D.
And Remember: The “Bill” in the School House Rock
cartoon was voiced by Jack Sheldon. The music and
lyrics were by Dave Frishberg
He signed you Bill. You’re a Law!
Oh Yeah!