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  • From: Thomas Beckett <thomas AT tbeckett.com>
  • To: internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: phone/fax spam
  • Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 12:57:10 -0400


Bill V. is right on with the statute and regs that ban unsolicited autodialer messages and faxes. Its a federal law, but anybody can enforce it in local courts. There is a mandatory penalty of $500.00 for each instance of an autodial call or unsolicited fax. From what's been reported on this list alone, "Preston" could be in the hole for a few thousand bucks.

That's kind of the model I'd like to see implemented for UCE as well. It would be a little bit harder to enforce because of the difficulty in tracking someone down. But once you found 'em, think about $500.00 times tens of thousands of spams. But even that wouldn't help if the spam came from Korea or Taiwan.

Getting back to local autodials and faxes, if there are a few people who find this to be a present ongoing annoyance, it might be fun to make a log of the autodial calls and keep all the unsolicited faxes for a month or two, and then sue the bejesus out of the offenders. Turn the proceeds over to a local relevant charitable organization. The real benefit would be the leverage achieved from the publicity for such a stunt. It would draw attention to the illegality and consequences of such practices and deter a larger number of businesses than those who were actually involved in the legal action.

My $0.02 for the day.

TaB




  • phone/fax spam, Thomas Beckett, 05/17/2002

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