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      CAUCE NEWS
  Volume 3, Number 3
     July, 1999

In this issue:

* New, better, anti-spam bill in Congress
* Other anti-spam bills in Congress
* Canadian judge whacks a spammer
* Europe: Austria, Italy outlaw spam
* Spam study says we all hate spam
* State laws and actions
* Spam Recycling Center delivers 150,000 spams to the FTC on Jul 22
* CAUCE T-shirts
* New mailing list software

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* New, better, anti-spam bill in Congress

On June 10th, Rep. Gary Miller introduced the "Can Spam Act",
H.R. 2162, with language similar to the California law that he
introduced last year before he moved from Sacramento to Washington.
It makes it illegal to send UCE in violation of a system's stated
policy, and makes a server banner of "NO UCE" or "UCE POLICY AT <url>"
a binding statement of the policy.

The bill is currently before both the Judiciary committee and Rep
Tauzin's Telecommunications subcommittee of the Commerce committee.

Representatives Holt (D-NJ), Metcalf (R-WA), English (R-PA), Underwood
(D-GU), Collin Peterson (D-MN), Morella (R-MD), Baker (R-LA), and
Calvert (R-CA) are all original cosponsors of the bill and reps
John Peterson (R-PA) and Ose (R-CA) signed on in July.

Write or call your representative and urge him or her to cosponsor
this well-crafted, broadly supported bill.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* Other anti-spam bills in Congress

Rep. Gene Green's "E-Mail User Protection Act" , H.R. 1910, makes it
illegal to send UCE to anyone who's told you not to, and outlaws
header forgery.  It's not an awful bill, but we believe that its
"opt-out" approach won't work.  It's also before the the Judiciary
committee and the Tauzin's Telecommunications subcommittee.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* Canadian judge whacks a spammer

In a surprising decision, an Ontario superior court judge ruled that
UCE is "contrary to the emerging principles of 'Netiquette'" and as
such represents a threat that could "undermine the integrity and
utility of the Internet system."  Web hosting company Nexx Online
<http://www.nexx.ca> cancelled service to BeaverHome.Com, because the
latter had been spamming through a third-party ISP in the U.S.
BeaverHome sued to get their web site reinstated, but the judge
refused to do so, on the basis that spamming is bad for the net.

The decision cites a lot of well-researched on-line material,
including a long quote from material at <http://spam.abuse.net>
written by CAUCE board member John Levine.  The decision is on-line at
<http://www.digitaldesk.com/stuff/netiquette.htm>.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* Europe: Austria, Italy outlaw spam

The Austrian parliament has passed an amendment to the
telecommunications law that makes it illegal to send bulk/broadcast or
advertising e-mail to anyone without the receipient's prior consent. 
The provision was endorsed by all major parties, and will take effect
as soon as it's published in the official register.

Legislation in Italy entered into force 21 June.  The use of fax,
robot telephone systems, and email require prior consent of the
recipient.

Legislation before the Bundestag in Germany confirms the principle of
"opt-in" for advertising email.

Elsewhere in the European Union, responses to spam have in general
involved opt-out and message subject tagging, so the Austrian and
Italian laws are a welcome move toward a more effective policy.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* New survey says we all hate spam

A study by the Gartner Group, commissioned by Bright Light
Technologies, confirms that spam is a growing problem and that
Internet users all hate it.  Of over 10,000 users polled, 83% said
they dislike spam, 14% were neutral, and only 3% liked it.  The longer
users had been with their ISPs, the more spam they got.

The study's available on-line at Bright Light's web site:
<http://www.brightlight.com/gartner/>

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* State law and actions

In North Carolina, Wake County Senator Eric Reeves introduced Senate
Bill 288, that makes it illegal to send junk e-mail, with recipients
having the right to sue senders for $10/message, using language
similar to last year's Miller bill in California.  The NC legislature
approved the bill and the governor signed it into law on June 28th.
This is the strongest state anti-spam law to date.

In New York, one of a group of privacy-related bills makes it illegal
to sell mailing lists for spamming.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* Spam Recycling Center delivers 150,000 spams to the FTC on Jul 22

The Spam Recycling Center is a project run by the Choose Your Mail
opt-in e-mail advertising service with support from CAUCE and other
organizations.  You can forward your spam to them at
spamrecycle@ChooseYourMail.com where it will be collected and analyzed
to compile statistics about the current state of spam.

On July 22 at 11:00 AM, the SRC will sponsor a press conference in
Washington DC to deliver 150,000 spams they've collected so far, to
release an analysis of the collected spam, and to raise support for
Rep. Gary Miller's "Can Spam Act" discussed above.  Rep. Miller will
be there along with representatives from CAUCE and other SRC
supporters.

For more info on the press conference, visit
http://www.chooseyourmail.com/spamstats.cfm

For more info on the SRC and some freebies for SRC participants
ranging from spam filtering software to meat (frozen steaks, not
canned pork), see http://www.spamrecycle.com.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* CAUCE T-shirts

You can now get an attractive CAUCE T-shirt.
http://www.libertees.com/stopspam.htm for a picture and ordering
information.  Since CAUCE neither solicits nor accepts financial
contributions, the maker will give a $1 contribution to ofcn.org,
the coordinating organization for Freenets, for each shirt sold.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

* New mailing list software

As of this past April, CAUCE-announce is running on the new GNU MailMan
Mailing List Manager (http://list.org/ .)  So, now you can subscribe, un-
subscribe, or put your subscription on hold for a while over the web at

http://lists.cauce.org/mailman/listinfo/cauce-announce

One possibly confusing aspect of this change is that all subscribers
now have to use a password to change their subscriptions.  If you were
added using the old software, you didn't set a password -- so MailMan
will have generated a random one for you.

To find out what your password is, go to the URL above, enter your
subscribed e-mail address into the text field at the bottom of the page,
and select the "Edit Options" button next to that field.  This'll bring
you to a page with an "Email My Password To Me" button.

If you don't have web access, you can still send basic "subscribe" or
"unsubscribe" commands to <cauce-announce-request@lists.cauce.org>.  If
neither of those options work or you have futher problems, feel free to
contact CAUCE postmaster J.D. Falk <jdfalk@cauce.org>.

- --------------------------------------------------------------

About This Message:

This message was written and broadcast by the Coalition Against
Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail. It is copyrighted (c) 1999 by the
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail.

We encourage redistribution of this message or items from it, as long
as they are not spammed anywhere, are on-topic for any forum to which
you send them, and include our copyright notice.  When in doubt, post
the URL of our site (http://www.cauce.org) instead, or put it in your
signature.  Press, broadcast, and Internet media may treat this
material as they would a press release. For other commercial
reproduction rights, contact John Levine <johnl@cauce.org>.

*************************************************************************
You have received this message because your address was signed up for
the CAUCE-ANNOUNCE mailing list. If you do not want to receive any
further messages from this list or were subscribed without your
knowledge, please use the list's home page

       http://lists.cauce.org/mailman/listinfo/cauce-announce

or send mail to cauce-announce-request@cauce.org with a subject of
"unsubscribe," or contact J.D. Falk <jdfalk@cauce.org> to be removed
manually. We exist to eradicate unsolicited e-mail, and, unlike
spammers, will honor "remove" requests.

On the other hand, if a friend passed along this message to you and
you would like to receive the CAUCE NEWS in the future, visit the
CAUCE web site at http://www.cauce.org to join, or send a message to
cauce-announce-request@cauce.org with a subject of "subscribe" if you
want to subscribe without joining.
*************************************************************************

For other questions or comments about this message, contact John
Levine <johnl@cauce.org>.

 

 

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