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Will legislation kill Spam? As MP Derek Wyatt presses ahead with his Anti-Spam campaign, David Dorn wonders whether laws and rules will ever get rid of Spam Spam is the bane of my life, I have to say. Certain of my mailboxes are all but unusable because of the volume of unwanted and un-asked-for dross. Indeed, Spam affects so many people in such a negative way that, quite rightly, folks are up in arms about it. We’ve covered ways to keep yourself as free of Spam as possible in other articles (click here to get to them), but there are those folks who want to legislate against it – bring the force of law to bear against the spammers. Now, while I don’t like Spam, I’m not sure that this is the right way to go. For instance, the EU has already decided that Spam Is A Bad Thing and that Something Must Be Done. Trouble is, they’re toothless against everywhere else in the world that isn’t Europe – so all those Spams from Korea and lord knows where else just aren’t covered. Not a lot of use, then (but then, you can say that about the EU in general, in some folks’ opinion.) Porn Derek Wyatt, though, has an entirely different take on the situation. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about porn Spam – he reckons his nippers have been “put off” using the Internet because of it. Not being privy to MP Wyatt’s mailboxes, I’ve no idea what sort of “porn” these Spams have been. Most of the porn-related Spams I see are textual, albeit with links to so-called live web-cams and suchlike, but thus far I’ve had no Spams with pictures in them. A friend has, though, had pictorial porn Spams, and they upset him a tad, so I’m maybe not typical. Even so, I’d go so far as to suggest that they’re easy to filter, no matter what email client you use – whether it be AOL’s or Outlook Express, Eudora or whatever. Certainly, while it might require you to actually download the things (not a major problem with unmetered dialup), there’s no reason why you actually have to see them. The message titles usually give them away, and the body text almost always will, so, using Outlook or Eudora or similar, you can easily set up rules to kill the nasty things without ever having to see them. In AOL, you can turn off emails from external accounts and all manner of other things that the parental and email controls allow, so as far as kids are concerned, it’s quite simple to protect them. And this is where Mr. Wyatt is proposing to make a few changes to the ISPs of the UK (including AOL). It looks as though he’s had a bit of a think, and worked out that if AOL can manage to control Spam to some extent, then all ISPs should be made responsible for the content of our emails, and should be legally responsible for removing Spam before it gets to us. NO NO NO NO! While I appreciate his viewpoint, I’ve got to say that this is the last thing I want to see. I do not want ISPs fiddling with my email. I do not want ISPs deciding which Web sites I can visit via their service and I do not want ISPs being forced to take up the role of Censor. Because that’s exactly what this proposed legislation will force upon us all. In my view, parents should shoulder the responsibility for what their children view, read and listen to. And it should be left up to them, the parents – there should not be proscriptive rules forced upon a parent to make them conform to someone else’s sense of morals. Likewise, adults should not need to be cosseted from the big wide world – we’re old enough to make our own choices and decide our own moral values – we don’t need (or want, I suspect) Big Brother screening our email to stop us from being corrupted. Neither do we need to be told we can’t view such and such a Web site, whether it offends somebody else or not. I have to say that I think is the majority viewpoint, too. I hope so, anyway. IF that’s the case, and if our elected representatives actually represent us instead of doing what they fancy on a whim, then this kind of legislation will never get through. Now, I’m not sticking up for Spammers – I detest their nasty and pernicious ways – I’m just heartily against censorship in any form, and definitely against the Nanny State-ism that seems to pervade our society. If you feel the same, why not email Mr Wyatt and let him know? His email address is mailto:wyattd@parliament.uk. If you don’t, then he won’t know how you feel, and email-fiddling may well be forced upon you. Of course, if you do support Nanny State-ism, then let him know, too. A word of caution, though. It’s been reported that some of the emails Mr Wyatt has received have been abusive. That’s not the way to go! There’s no need to lambast the man – he’s following his principles, and you’ve got to applaud him for that – he’s just not going about it in a way that suits the vast majority of us.
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