Thread: Spamming

  1. #1
    Jack of many languages Dino's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Chappell Hill, Texas
    Posts
    2,332

    Spamming

    Is spamming illegal? Is a spammer a criminal?
    Mainframe assembler programmer by trade. C coder when I can.

  2. #2

  3. #3
    Jack of many languages Dino's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Chappell Hill, Texas
    Posts
    2,332
    Thanks for the link. I read it.

    It seems there is a definition of "spam" there, and a few cases have been heard in court, but the overall impression I left with was "spamming is alive and well" and if you follow the rules of "you can spam", then, you can spam.
    Mainframe assembler programmer by trade. C coder when I can.

  4. #4
    Guest Sebastiani's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    Waterloo, Texas
    Posts
    5,708
    Quote Originally Posted by Dino View Post
    Is spamming illegal? Is a spammer a criminal?
    (1) Depends (see Wifelags' response, above).
    (2) Should people be forced people to accept unsolicited, *commercial* correspondence? No, but I don't see how that amounts to a criminal act, either (that is, unless it can be established that the material is indeed "harmful" in some way). A civil (ie: tort) case is generally most appropriate, IMO.
    Code:
    #include <cmath>
    #include <complex>
    bool euler_flip(bool value)
    {
        return std::pow
        (
            std::complex<float>(std::exp(1.0)), 
            std::complex<float>(0, 1) 
            * std::complex<float>(std::atan(1.0)
            *(1 << (value + 2)))
        ).real() < 0;
    }

  5. #5
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Out of scope
    Posts
    4,079
    I don't think spamming should face any legal opposition regardless of how annoying it is. It simply isn't doing anything I find morally wrong and it's absolutely not a new concept, it's just a digital version of some very ancient sales tactics.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  6. #6
    'Allo, 'Allo, Allo
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Posts
    639
    Quote Originally Posted by Substantiani View Post
    Wifelags
    I think you were bested in this duel :-)

  7. #7
    and the hat of sweating
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Toronto, ON
    Posts
    3,545
    Quote Originally Posted by Sebastiani View Post
    (2) Should people be forced people to accept unsolicited, *commercial* correspondence? No, but I don't see how that amounts to a criminal act, either (that is, unless it can be established that the material is indeed "harmful" in some way). A civil (ie: tort) case is generally most appropriate, IMO.
    Spam IS harmful in many ways:
    1 - It wastes people's bandwidth when they have to download that crap.
    2 - If there is a swarm of Spam, it can cause a Denial of Service attack which could greatly affect companies that depend on E-mail on a daily basis.
    3 - The dumbasses that actually fall for it and buy the stuff they're selling are usually being swindled out of their money, since the product they're selling is usually fake anyways.

    If it was up to me, I'd give Spammers the death penalty. But then again, that's just me.
    "I am probably the laziest programmer on the planet, a fact with which anyone who has ever seen my code will agree." - esbo, 11/15/2008

    "the internet is a scary place to be thats why i dont use it much." - billet, 03/17/2010

  8. #8
    Banned
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    Ontario Canada
    Posts
    9,547
    Quote Originally Posted by cpjust View Post
    Spam IS harmful in many ways:
    1 - It wastes people's bandwidth when they have to download that crap.
    2 - If there is a swarm of Spam, it can cause a Denial of Service attack which could greatly affect companies that depend on E-mail on a daily basis.
    3 - The dumbasses that actually fall for it and buy the stuff they're selling are usually being swindled out of their money, since the product they're selling is usually fake anyways.

    If it was up to me, I'd give Spammers the death penalty. But then again, that's just me.
    4 - Even when all is normal, sorting spam from real email can soak up many hours of employee time.

  9. #9
    Registered User jdragyn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    96
    Quote Originally Posted by CommonTater View Post
    4 - Even when all is normal, sorting spam from real email can soak up many hours of employee time.
    My time at home is just as valuable to me as my time at work is to my employer. Having to hunt through a "junk mail" folder once in a while to make sure I'm not missing any legitimate e-mail, I am wasting time that could be spent in other pursuits. In effect, the spammers are stealing my time regardless of whether or not I succumb to their "offers". Even if I have a sophisticated junk-mail filter that is 100% effective (and none are that I have ever seen), I still had to spend time learning to use it and configure it.

    This to me is akin to a door-to-door salesman knocking on my door every few minutes. If I don't keep looking to see who it is, I may miss my neighbor coming over to visit. Just because it is easier to create technology to handle junk e-mail doesn't make it any less of a nuisance.

    What sort of laws would we enact if suddenly there were masses of people walking from door to door at all hours, knocking on doors, being pushy about selling their product or leaving big posters on the porches/doorsteps of those who don't answer the door? Especially if some of them were just trying to get me to simply open my front door so they could push past me and either start stealing my things, or worse hold my kids hostage to force me to help them get into my neighbors' houses...

    The act of spam itself may not be illegal (depending on where you live), therefore a spammer may not be a criminal in the sense of doing something illegal. However it has been shown that there are a small number of spammers that are responsible for the vast amount of junk we get. I think they SHOULD be treated as criminals because, despite the fact that there are so many junk mail filters available, actions against the servers that host spammers (where when one is taken down spam drops significantly for a short time), almost universal outrage across the internet about spam, etc, they persist in providing this "service" that no one wants. (I won't go into the security risks because that's not fair to a "legitimate spammer" who is just trying to make money in an annoying way.)
    Last edited by jdragyn; 12-23-2010 at 05:09 PM.
    C+/- programmer extraordinaire

Popular pages Recent additions subscribe to a feed

Similar Threads

  1. Spamming legal?
    By VirtualAce in forum A Brief History of Cprogramming.com
    Replies: 30
    Last Post: 09-16-2008, 10:04 AM