The US House of Representatives has given final congressional approval to a bipartisan bill to fight spam, clearing the way for US President George W. Bush to sign the measure into law.

“The “Can-Spam Act of 2003” which sets penalties for the most deceptive kinds of unsolicited marketing email, was approved in the House by unanimous consent late Monday, after the Senate approved the measure on November 25 by a vote of 392-5. “

In the land of the free, a couple of university students are mounting a legal case suggesting pop up ads are free speech. They’ve been using the Windows Messenger system messagew system (different to the Instant Messenger program) to send ads promoting, ironically, software to block pop up ads.

Only just caught up with this from November:

“European Union digital privacy rules came into force Friday requiring companies to get consent before sending e-mail, tracking personal data on Web sites or pinpointing callers’ locations via satellite-linked mobile telephones. ” Full Article

But they leave it up to each individual country to work out enforcement. Interesting it includes rules that require companies to get permission from web site visitors before using cookies to collect information. Which is clearly reflective of the European penchant for privacy, but in practicality might not be easy – most web servers use cookies as soon as the visitor hits the site, for things like site statistics.

Having to ask every person who lands on your site if it’s ok to set cookies would be tedious. And if they say ‘no’, you can’t then do what would be standard practice to remember a preference – set a cookie! So they’ll be asked everytime they come to your site – a never ending circle.

The Join Me group got a big write up in today’s paper. Send in a passport photo and you too can join. Great story – and a positive outcome, with their Good Friday campaign, encouraging people to ‘do good’ each Friday.

Join Me was established by Danny Wallace, who partnered Dave Gorman in one of my more favourite frivolous comedic enterprises – travelling the world to track down other people named Dave Gorman, and introduced me to to the term Googlewhack. You haven’t heard of a Googlewhack, goodness:

“A googlewhack is what happens when two words are entered in to Google and it comes back with one and only one hit.”

Try http://www.googlewhack.com/ for all the info.

I don’t actually read every spam, but I did notice the footer on one which slipped past my McAfee SpamKiller software. I love the nerve:

“No longer wish to receive our newsletters? please go to this site and enter your address. If you’d like to call me, please do so at 1-808-347-1880. My name is David and if I am at my desk I will take your call. Please note that local and long distance charges apply. Extra charges include a $5 per minute service charge automatically debited to your phone bill.”

It’s the $5 a minute cost to have my name taken off their list. Not only do they spam me, they CHARGE ME to stop!!!

And yes, I firmly believe there is a man named David just waiting to take my call 🙂

Now us lucky little Australians have anti-spam legislation protecting us, it’s pretty apparent some companies will find a way around it. For example, ninemsn Hotmail constantly sends me emails imploring me to upgrade to a paid account (to get more storage space etc).

I went to try and turn this promos off, and lo and behold it says:

“Please note that this choice does not apply to some MSN websites that send out periodic e-mails informing you of technical service issues, new feature announcements, and news about MSN products and services, which are considered essential to the provision of the service you have requested. You will not be able to stop receiving or unsubscribe to these mailings as they are considered a part of the service you have chosen. “

Obvious query is just how is sending me promotional emails for paid products ‘essential to the provision of the service’?

I seems to me these promotions fall under the definition of commercial email in the new law. But I can’t opt out. Which appears to me to be a contravention of the act.

Be interesting to see how companies like ninemsn deal with this.

One of the interesting angles specifically about something like Hotmail is that although it’s branded by an Australian company – ninemsn, I suspect as a user my legal agreement is with Microsoft in the USA, thus easily circumventing the legislation.

Can’t resist this one:

“An Austrian trade union has claimed the repetitive playing of Christmas Carols in department stores is nothing short of “psycho-terrorism” for salespeople.”

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/03/1070351620873.html

Well it’s all happening in the anti-spam utopia of the Australian Government. They pushed through their new anti-spam legislation, which means, as of early 2004, it will be illegal to send commercial emails without the recipient’s prior consent, and an unsubscribe function. They’ve also banned email address ‘harvesting’ software.

But of course there’s an exemption – for POLITICANS! Yup, political parties (and churches and charities) are exempt. So politics, god and fundraising are ok spam topics. All the while little businesses around the country sweat over their email lists (you know how techno-literate they’ll be!) and the threat of a $1million fine for a breach.

Content companies living in the 19th century, grimly hanging on to archaic constructs of content, and suing IT savvy teenagers.

Plus

Just about most expensive broadband access costs in the developed world.

Equals

A damn good reason why Australia ranks 29th on a table of 30 countries in terms of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Ah the ‘clever country’.

Johansen’s explots (below) remind me of my favourite copyright-breaking story from 2002 – the notorious black marker. Sony’s “Key2Audio” anti-copying system is included on millions of audio CDs. It was based around a special security track around the outer edge of the disk. Til some enterprising person discovered you could just cover the track using a black marker. Worked like a treat.

But, if you fail, perservere. Sony is now releasing it’s next generation of protection. Apparently it ‘blocks ripping but allows tracks to be transferred to “authorised” portable music players.’ EG They don’t mind if you play it on your Sony digital player, but they do mind you uploading to Kazaa.

“The technology uses the established method of offering two versions of the record on the same CD: one that can be played in regular players and another intended for computer use.”