5/24/98
The Justice Department's misguided attack on Microsoft is not the only indication that federal meddling in the computer industry is likely to do harm where it intends to do good. 
     The Senate has recently voted 99-to-0 for a bill designed to limit spam, the annoying junk e-mail that clutters up your system with pitches for free money or XXX-rated Web sites. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Frank Murkowski, R Alaska, and Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., would require all unsolicited commercial e-mail to carry complete and correct reply information, because spammers often put false e-mail addresses on their messages to divert angry responses to some innocent party. The senders of spam would have to honor an unwilling recipient's request to be removed from the mailing list, and all this would be backed up by a government bureaucracy handing out civil fines of up to $15,000. 
     Why would that make matters worse instead of better? Because it implies that junk e-mail is legitimate and legal as long as it follows the new rules. 
     A lot of companies that have stayed away from spam will start using it, says the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (cauce.org). 
     ``Imagine what happens when every company that buys newspaper ads, that buys radio spots or direct postal mail begins to spam,'' CAUCE board member John Mozena told The New York Times. ``You'd never get yourself removed from every mailing list.'' 
     The House Commerce Committee is considering two spam bills. One resembles the Senate's lame attempt; the other, by Chris Smith, R-N.J., would extend to junk e-mail the same provisions that were used to end the plague of junk faxes. CAUCE supports the Smith bill. 
     But while lawmakers dither, the Internet community is not without resources to defend itself. Meet Paul Vixie and the Realtime Black Hole List. 
     It's Vixie's software that translates people-friendly Web names like InsideDenver.com to the dots-and-digits names computers use for identification when they're talking to each other.   
     Vixie hates what spam is doing to the Internet. ``I put a lot of effort into making the Internet possible,'' he has said. ``I'm angry to see the results of my work abused in this way.'' 
     But unlike other people who are angry about spam, he did something about it. When spam came into his system, he'd identify the Internet provider sending it, and if they wouldn't stop he'd set up his own system to reject all traffic from that IP's dots-and-digits name. 
     Like light that can't escape from a black hole, messages from that site would never reach Paul Vixie. 
     Not that spammers would care, but then Vixie began making his Black Hole list available to other Internet providers. They know him, and they're inclined to trust his judgment because they know how valuable his translation software is. Nobody has to sign on, but if they do mail sent to them from inside the Black Hole list simply disappears. About a fifth of Internet providers block mail from the Black Hole list, Vixie says. 
     That makes the list a serious nuisance to service providers willing to tolerate spam. The instant their IP number is added to Vixie's list, customers start complaining that some of their e-mail isn't getting through, and soon after that, they start leaving. 
     It all happens in real time; a reformed service provider can rejoin the rest of the online universe as quickly as it was blacked out. And it's all consensual. People who like getting spam are perfectly free to choose a service provider that accepts it. Service providers who think Vixie's decisions are wrong don't have to use the list. 
     For the record, Vixie supports the Smith bill, which would allow any recipient of unsolicited commercial e-mail to sue the spammer for $500.  
     ``The Smith bill allows damages to be collected from advertisers (that is, the people who sell the product being advertised) or from any U.S. citizen on the board of directors or owning a majority share of either the advertiser's company (even if offshore) or the spammer (even if offshore). This is why the Direct Marketing Association opposes it _ it is *very* enforceable and if enacted it will irrevocably push the cost of advertising back where it belongs: with the advertisers,'' he wrote. 
      Whether Congress will figure that out is another matter. In the meantime, Internet users should be glad there's a Realtime Black Hole at the core of their online galaxy.