Welcome to the 21st Century…
States rush to pass laws to fight spam. By the end of this year, all 50 states may have adopted antispam laws, and demand for a national, uniform law to regulate unsolicited e-mail is growing among industry groups. [Computerworld News]
I don’t think people are getting the gist of the internet. They still try to carve out their little piece of it and say, “This is what you can do. This is what you can’t do.” The internet is now a global thing, without territory, without boundry. It is a world unto its own and basically, it’s the wild west. Laws made in the physical world hold little if no meaning to the internet world.
But outlawing spam in the United States isn’t going to stop it from originating in China, India, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, or any other country. Unless the United States can figure out some way to put a spam filter across the backbone of the internet, anti-Spam legislation will merely be one of those silly laws people laugh at in 50 years.
It’s simply another case of a politician thinking it’s a good idea and passing a law without researching their information first. Sad thing is, the states that pass similar legislation just because the first state did.
In reference to this article: Microsoft is a proponent of new email standards and anti -spam legislation. This from the people who brought us Front Page HTML (which only worked fully with MS IIS servers or servers running FPSE) and Interenet Explorer? I could see it now…”MS Email 9.0. Supports XHTML, XML, and ASP but not JSP, JAVA, PERL, PHP, or any other open source code.” Sounds like the perfect marketing scheme. Get your foot in the door to develop standards that you can exploit to your fullest advantage and then do so.