Mailbag: The SPAM Act

Here’s a sampling of the feedback I received regarding my recent article on the proposed SPAM Act, comparing it to the V-Chip. Thank you to everyone who sent their comments.

* “I’d much rather deal with spam on my own both personally and on my corporate network (I admin 80 PCs and four servers) than have the government create yet another costly and useless set of rules, regulations and laws.”

* “I agree with almost all of what you say about this being an outbreak of the ‘Do Something Disease,’ and many of your other points. Where I take exception is your assertion that ‘about 10 minutes of online searching and $29.95 (or less) can buy you any of several very good client-side spam filters that are easy to install and very effective at stopping spam.’ I have seriously reviewed a number of released and unreleased internal solutions and products (or candidates) in the spam-blocker realm. My view is that most of them are horrible and cause more of an issue than they resolve.”

* “Your assessment of the proposed law is dead-on.”

* “You summarized exactly the ineffectiveness built into the SPAM Act.”

* “My strongest disagreement with your argument is regarding the recipient’s ability to block spam in other ways. Spam control for $29 or ISP spam protection you say? These measures are far from foolproof. Either you configure your spam filter loosely (if you are given the opportunity to configure your filter at all)… or you configure your spam filter tightly and almost certainly miss valid e-mail from time to time. Unless, of course, you go through all your filtered spam to make sure nothing important is hiding there. This takes time and costs somebody – not the spammer – money. And you are still paying $29 for the spam filter!”