Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

[Ragnar Lonn <]

On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Claudio Allocchio +39 040 3758523 wrote:

> thus, could we please land again on planet Earth, and forget about how to 
> convince professional killers that they should weare a black t-shirt with 
> a red sentence stating "I'm a killer, beware"?
> 

:-)  It seems several people still don't get it. What do we have today?

Today we have a network where spammers hide and spam and if anyone
should happen to catch a spammer red-handed, there is little in the
law that will help punish the perpetrator.

What we can get is:

A network where spammers hide and spam and if anyone should happen
to catch a spammer red-handed, the spammer can be made to pay high
fines, go to prison, be electrocuted in a microwave-oven, whatever.

Which one of the two would you prefer?  I think the choice if
fairly obvious. 

If an alternative isn't perfect, do you guys always rule it out in
favor of a much worse one?  I don't, any little thing helps and it's
not very productive to just whine about all the spammers that will
*avoid* any new legislation. Instead think of the ones that will get 
caught in it/by it and try to find out how to maximize that number. Also,
laws have actually been known to deter people from doing something so laws
against spamming, even if difficult to enforce (like most laws) will
probably mean less spamming overall.

  /Ragnar