{"id":116,"date":"2008-05-03T01:42:22","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T09:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=116"},"modified":"2013-07-17T13:13:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T21:13:10","slug":"batten-your-hatches-sandbag-the-whole-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"<q>Batten your hatches! Sandbag the whole town!<\/q>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/28bytes.livejournal.com\/386665.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: bolder ;\">28bytes<\/span> alerts his readers to the fact that 3 May 2008 is the 30th anniversary of the first piece of spam e.mail.<\/a><\/p> <p>Although &mdash; because spam e.mail can cross national borders &mdash; there is a limit to what the Federal government might practically and legitimately do about spam e.mail, the Federal government doesn't do what it could.  In fact, Federal legislation actively <em>subverted<\/em> the efforts of some state legislatures to battle spam.<\/p> <p>My suggestion is this:  <strong>On 3 May of every year<\/strong>, send <em>one<\/em> piece of email, objecting in your own words (however brief) to poor Federal action against spam, to each of the following: <ul><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.house.gov\/representatives\/\">your District Representative to Congress<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.senate.gov\/general\/contact_information\/senators_cfm.cfm\">the two Senators of your State or Commonwealth<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"mailto:president@whitehouse.gov\">the President<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"mailto:webmaster@democrats.org\">the Democratic National Committee<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"mailto:Chairman@gop.com\">the Republican National Committee<\/a><\/li><\/ul> (If one of your Senators is hiding his or her e.mail address, then <a href=\"mailto:curator@sec.senate.gov\">send e.mail to <code>curator@sec.senate.gov<\/code><\/a>.  I don't have a fall-back address for Representatives.)<\/p> <p>Encourage each of your acquaintances, friends, and family members who are unhappy about spam e.mail to do the same, and to likewise encourage those whom they know.<\/p> <p>This year, there will be very few people sending such objections, but next year there could be substantially more, and the numbers could continue to grow each year.<\/p> <p><span style=\"font-style: italic ; \">&#91;<span style=\"font-weight: bolder ; \"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps ;\">Edit<\/span><\/span> (2013:07\/17)<span style=\"font-weight: bolder ; \">:<\/span> As part of an <abbr title=\"search-engine optimization\">SEO<\/abbr> programme to get sites to link to <a href=\"http:\/\/politics.answers.com\/\">Politics.Answers.com<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pub\/stuart-hultgren\/73\/aa8\/aa9\">Stuart Hultgren<\/a>, of <a href=\"http:\/\/wwww.answers.com\/\">Answers.com<\/a>, contacted me to let me know of a dead link and of a good replacement.&#93;<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"28bytes alerts his readers to the fact that 3 May 2008 is the 30th anniversary of the first piece of spam e.mail. Although &mdash; because spam e.mail can cross national borders &mdash; there is a limit to what the Federal government might practically and legitimately do about spam e.mail, the Federal government doesn't do what [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,69,104,4],"tags":[192,193,194,195,196,197,198,49],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ideology-philosophy","category-information-technology","category-news","category-public","tag-congress","tag-democratic-national-committee","tag-e-mail","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-president","tag-republican-national-committee","tag-senate","tag-spam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}