Spam

My friend Mark is satisfied with the endowment bestowed on him by his creator. He has had enough.

Larry Lessig, on the other hand, would like more.

My mail server is under attack by freelotto.com. Over the past week, Freelotto has spammed the non-existent user ldjones@unicom.com 368 times. And it didn't start last week, they've been at it since February 2002!

The Bad Texas Spam Bill passed out of committee last night. It's now on its way to the Senate floor, where it's certain to be approved. It is, however, a little less bad than it was two weeks ago.

Most importantly, the 90-day license-to-spam loophole has been closed. That would have been a disaster, giving spammers free reign to our mailboxes. We got the time period for processing opt-out requests reduced to three days. That means there could be some miserable weekends ahead for many of us, but total meltdown may have been averted.

Unfortunately, the problems with laughable penalties and barriers to private action remain. Spammers will be emboldened, knowing that a person bringing action will pay more to file in small claims court than they'll collect in damages.

The hearing on the Bad Texas Spam Bill is scheduled for tomorrow. I've spent the last week amassing a packet that I will be delivering as part of my testimony. The packet includes a number of letters in opposition to the bill. I want to recognize and thank all the people who have helped by writing a letter.

The list includes:

• SpamCon Foundation
• Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)
• Nick Nicholas
• Dewey Coffman, President & CEO, Net-Sieve
• Chad Kissinger, President, Onramp Access
• Jonah Yokubaitis, CEO, Texas.Net, Inc.
• Prof. Don Turnbull, University of Texas at Austin

Thanks to everybody who helped, and I hope our combined effort convinces the Committee that this bill won't help the spam problem.

Link: A Challenging Response to Challenge-Response.

Prof. Ed Felten has added his voice to those concerned about challenge-response anti-spam systems. He makes the excellent point that the early adopters may see some benefit, but ultimately the system breaks down. That's what the geeks mean when they say something "doesn't scale."

Link: TidBITS Policy on Challenge-Response

I recently blogged an argument against challenge-response anti-spam systems. I was glad to see it, but concerned it may be a tad inscrutable to the non-technical reader. Then I saw this article, explaining the policy of the TidBITS mailing list, and thought it did a good job of breaking down some of the problem.

Link: Texas Spam Bill: Who We Trying To Help Here?

I wrote an article on HB 1282 for Kuro5hin, a web site with community written news and commentary. The article posted to their op-ed section this morning. It summarizes the situation with the Bad Spam Bill.

And if you tell me it should have been whom and not who, I swear I'm going to come over there and hit you.

Link: John Levine: Challenge-response systems are as harmful as spam

A new--and rather evil--wave is sweeping the net. More people are using challenge-response (C-R) systems to protect their email inboxes against spam. If you send email to somebody protected by C-R, your email is intercepted. Their C-R 'bot will send back an email that demands you complete some challenge (click a link, answer a question, quack like a duck). If you respond correctly, then it assumes you aren't a spammer. Your email is passed along and you are whitelisted against future challenges.

That is, providing you aren't protected yourself by C-R. In which case your C-R 'bot challenges back, and the little tango runs ad infinitum, until the net suffers heat death.

That's just one of the problems with C-R. Many people have been watching the growth of these systems with some consternation. Finally, John Levine has taken a stab at documenting some of the deficiencies of C-R. Kudos to John!

The Senate Committee on Business and Commerce recessed this morning without calling up HB 1282, the Bad Texas Spam Bill. The next meeting hasn't been scheduled yet. I'm concerned they will waive the five-day posting rule from the Senate floor and we may not catch it in time. It's all part of the lobbying game.

Today's meeting was quick and non-contentious. The mood was giddy.

Chairman: Are their any objections? ...

Senator presenting bill (only other senator in the room): I'd like to note empty chairs usually don't object.

Chairman: Yeah, but they have been known to vote.

The committee never made quorum. At one point, the chair wondered whether all the missing senators might be hiding out in Oklahoma.

Over the past few days, more people have discovered the bad Texas spam bill that's been sailing through the legislature. We've made our opening bid, and now we are waiting for a response from the bill's sponsor. My argument has been that this bill has a number of flaws that end up making it spammer-friendly. We'll know Monday, maybe Tuesday, whether they are willing to address those problems.