Re: Creeping barriers to electronic markets

[Richard Katz <richkatz@acm.org>]

Todd Boyle wrote:

> John Gilmore of EFF complains the new US SPAM bill
> raises potential barriers to *individual* bids and offers.
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg01449.html
>
> http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/25/171200&mode=thread&tid=25 
>
>
> Is anybody on top of this?
>
> Todd Boyle - Kirkland WA - 425-827-3107
> http://www.ledgerism.net/
>

He writes:

John writes:
"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.
That would make a large fraction of hotmail users instant criminals."

I don't think this analysis is logically correct.  
I don't necessarily favor the bill.  I'd rather have it defeated 
because the California law deals directly with 
the inability for the recipient to stop spam.

But using John's analysis:

1. If you have an account "abcdef@hotmail.com" 
and you send an e-mail and sign it as abcdef@hotmail.com, 
how does that make you an instant criminal?

2. On the other hand, if you have a domain 
and you say it's registered to abcdef@hotmail.com 
so you've lied, and you send a commercial ad for your domain, 
then you've used the false registration to evade being contacted to stop spam.
I don't have a problem in saying that's wrong.

Is there a problem? 

It certainly is not good for Web services to have Web addresses with false registrations.
Is it?

Regards,


Rich Katz