Since I’ve been slashdotted, I’d imagine that the majority of the people reading this site today could care less about politics. That being the case, here’s a question I’ve got for you guys : What do you think about the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to oppose the creation of a “Do Not Spam” list? Personally, I think a list like that would never work since spammers can just move their servers offshore. That being the case (and feel free to disagree with me on that), what can we do to stop it? Here’s an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while :

The first thing we need to do is come up with a definition of spam beyond the standard “I know it when I see it”. While “unsolicited mass email” is a nice, vague description, it’s still a little too broad. For example, I work for a big company that sends out millions of emails a day for various newletters, greetings, etc. While these emails may sometimes fit into the criteria above, they’re definitely not spam. Yet, some of the more aggressive spam blocking solutions out there have our company’s email servers “flagged”.

Once we’ve seperated the wheat from the chaff, the next step would be to come up with some anti-spam laws. Due to the lack of a federal anti-spam law, this is handled on a state-by-state basis. Since spammer can simply move their servers outside the jurisdiction of any anti-spam laws, it seems to me that even federal laws will be toothless. At this point, the only real way to regulate this is through international means.

Which leads to the crux of my idea, which is that an international body of some sort should come up with some anti-spam laws that have equal penalties in each of the countries that sign onto the agreement. The keey to making this work however would be that any countries who don’t agree with the terms laid out would have their internet access to and from any of the anti-spam countries blocked at the backbone level. Simply put, if you facilitate spammers, you don’t get to play with the rest of the internet.

Of course this all just a totalitarian fantasy that would never work. Even if we could all agree on all of the conditions I outlined above in a way that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s online freedom, we still live in a country in which the person in charge of the Justice Department thinks Left Behind belongs in the non-fiction section of the bookstore and that any international cooperation is a step towards everyone getting “666″ tattooed on our foreheads.