Politech: Why Fed spam bill will boost the Nigerian economy, by A.Lizard

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 21:00:21 -0800
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: "A.Lizard" <alizard () ecis com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Why Fed spam bill is a "critical law, " from
  America Online [sp]
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031122194333.021ed830 () mail well com>

At 07:46 PM 11/22/03 -0500, you wrote:
> ---
>
> AMERICA ONLINE, AN INDUSTRY LEADER IN THE FIGHT FOR TOUGHER ANTI-SPAM 
> LAWS, APPLAUDS BIPARTISAN CONGRESSIONAL AGREEMENT AND ACTION ON TOUGH NEW 
> SPAM LAWS
> Dulles, VA - November 21, 2003 - America Online, Inc., the world's leading 
> interactive services company,  today issued the following statement 
> concerning the bipartisan agreement on Federal anti-spam legislation (S. 
> 877) that is being adopted by Congress:
Will they still be thanking Congress when their spam load doubles or worse?

The legislation is "opt-out", not "opt-in"... how many Fortune 500 
companies are going to start spamming us with "legitimate" advertising "in 
full compliance with S.877"? My guess is *all* of them. Each with a valid 
postal address on the bottom.
The only good news about this is that everyone who challenges any of the 
392 Congressmen and 97 senators will be able to point to their opponent as 
"the jackass who doubled the amount of spam you are getting by *LEGALIZING* 
spam". Anyone who knows any challenger running for Congress or the Senate 
should point this out around the first of next year. I think every American 
Internet user should know who to thank for this.
Actually, I think "doubles" is optimistic. Most of us can expect to see our 
Internet bills go up due to the increase of spam traffic this law is going 
to generate, and some providers who can't pass their increased costs along 
will probably go under.
However, I can think of one group who's going to find the "Do Not Spam" 
registry *very* useful. The Nigerian spammers. Anyone who registers for it 
is probably going to find the spam he won't be getting from "reputable 
companies" replaced by Nigerian spam.
A.Lizard
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