What a joke !!!

Subject line requirements: how is one supposed to know if an email address is “within the United States”?

I’m wondering if, under this law, it should be illegal to initiate from within the United States to anywhere or to initiate from within the United States to within the United States? How is it possible to know whether an address is owned by a person within the United States? Am I interpreting this too narrowly, but if I am a US citizen living abroad (or in the military serving abroad), does this law no longer apply?

Is it worthwhile modifying sec 4.a.1.B to add an “X-UCE-status: true” (or similar) requirement? I think this would serve a few purposes:

* It would serve as a template for other countries that don’t use English as a language (not sure if this is commonly done or not)

* it wasn’t clear to me whether in sec 4.a if the Subject: header was required or if this section applied only if it was included in the mail message.

On spam, I get as few as 20 spam e-mails on a light day, and perhaps as many as 100. Much of it on account of being a domain holder of record. Kinda obvious when you setup an e-mail account domains@ your domain, and half the spam comes to that address. But I digress. It requires time and attention, even to delete them or block them, because I have to pay attention and not rid myself of wanted mail.

It’s a conundrum, how to do this so it doesn’t preclude e-mail you actually want. I suppose you could call that SBE; Solicited Bulk E-mail. Heh. If my sales rep from the computer parts place sends me something with ADV: in it, and I block all ADV: mail, then I’d better be able to make exceptions easily. And that means even then the existence of spam costs time and attention.

On the topic of fax spams, argh! Illegal or not, it still happens. I get at least a fax per day, that being the prime wear on the fax machine and use of paper. In effect, an entire toner cartridge was used for a few pages of legitimate faxes. A $31 cost, for a few pages, sucked dry by junk prematurely.

I posted the fax number on my web site and it was harvested far faster than spammers harvest e-mail addresses. The first fax came within 24 hours of the number being public. That fast, whoever gathers the numbers had scanned the site and started the process. That level of efficiency would be admirable if not for such a diabolical application.

first, there is the direct good effect of the threat of recovery for “stupid spammers” who can be caught based on headers.

then, there is the indirect effect that should reduce spam over time since everyone will autodelete any e-mail with “ADV” or “UCE” and hence reduce its effectiveness.

but there is a real chilling effect on otherwise protected commercial speech. if i’m not a spammer but, say, a salesman for a specialized industry such as chip manufacturing, and I get a new lead as to a potential buyer, is my unsolicited e-mail to the lead (not spam in the traditional sense as it is a legitimate and long-standing business practice in many industries) now illegal if I don’t put in the UCE or ADV tag?

The biggest open question is mixed e-mails. What if the e-mail has both commercial AND non-commercial content, say an advocacy piece sponsored by Greenpiece with a link at the bottom requesting you contribute to the charity? An excerpt from a New York Times with a link to subscribe to the New York Times? Where do you draw the line?

Its a good idea, but there are quite a few hypotheticals like these hiding at the margins, as is always the case when you try to regulate speech.