[Air-l] Re: anti-spam law

[Laura Gurak]

Thanks for this! I notice that the reporter is basing her story on the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which only appears (from
her story) to be interested in email porn having do to with children. Still,
it would be interesting to see if they had any real numbers. Their Web site
has a "cybertips" link that you can use to give them a tip about any email
porn related to children. But this is still not a very scientific way to
count. But, great lead!
LG

on 1/8/02 2:51 PM, Nora Paul at npaul at umn.edu wrote:

> Local intrepid reporter, Les Suzakamo of the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, had an
> article about the increase in child porn spam messages in his December 17,
> 2001 column:  http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/040240.htm - in
> the article it simply says that pornographers are getting bolder.  But there
> is good information about the efforts to curb these "services" - most of
> which are from overseas.
> 
> Nora Paul
> Director, Institute for New Media Studies
> University of Minnesota
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Laura Gurak" <gurakl at umn.edu>
> To: "Internet Studies Center" <isc at plato.agricola.umn.edu>; "AIR List"
> <air-l at aoir.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 2:18 PM
> Subject: anti-spam law
> 
> 
>> Thanks to everyone who wrote back regarding my spam question. Anecdotally,
>> almost everyone who wrote back indicated that they had in fact noticed a
>> rise in porn spam (should we coin a new term: pornspam?) Anyway, one of
> our
>> graduate students here, Mark Stewart, suggested that perhaps this rise is
> a
>> last-ditch effort of pornspammers to get their message out before the
>> California court heard this case. See below, excerpted from the January 7
>> Edupage (for fair use purposes, of course). Others of you suggested that
> the
>> general rise in spam around the holiday season (thanks to my colleage Dr.
>> Andrew Odlyzko, director of our Digital Technology Center, for his
>> information on this) might be to blame. Still others noted that perhaps
>> there has been a rise in "adult content" since 9/11. Anyway, all of this
> is
>> anecdotal. Anyone out there in the Internet research world interested in
>> doing something more scientific??
>> LG
>> 
>> 
>> ---------------------
>> APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS ANTI-SPAM LAW
>> Commercial e-mails, or spam, must contain valid return addresses
>> and other identifiers that make it easier for consumers to remove
>> themselves from mailing lists, according to a ruling upheld
>> recently by a California appeals court. The defendants in that
>> case, two Palo Alto-based companies, had argued that the previous
>> ruling violated the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.
>> Because Congress has yet to settle on any comprehensive anti-spam
>> law, consumers must rely on state law. But that could result in
>> a hodgepodge of restrictions on legitimate Web-based businesses.
>> The California ruling requires that commercial e-mailers also
>> mark their messages with an "ADV:" in the subject heading, and
>> a special "ADV:ADLT" for messages linked to adult content. The
>> Supreme Court in October refused to hear a challenge to a
>> Washington state law that stringently regulates spam in that
>> state.
>> (Cnet, 7 January 2002)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ----------------
>> Laura J. Gurak, Ph.D. Associate Professor
>> Rhetoric Department, University of Minnesota
>> 1994 Buford Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108  v 612-624-3773
>> also--Director, Internet Studies Center -- www.isc.umn.edu
>> Faculty Fellow, Law School
>> gurakL at tc.umn.edu   http://www.rhetoric.umn.edu/faculty/LGurak/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 

----------------
Laura J. Gurak, Ph.D. Associate Professor
Rhetoric Department, University of Minnesota
1994 Buford Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108  v 612-624-3773
also--Director, Internet Studies Center -- www.isc.umn.edu
Faculty Fellow, Law School
gurakL at tc.umn.edu   http://www.rhetoric.umn.edu/faculty/LGurak/