Jeremy Jaynes gets a free pass?

It's déjà vu all over again. I see that Jeremy Jaynes has won his most recent argument in Virginia that the state's anti-spam law is unconstitutional. (Once again, thanks to Slashdot for the heads-up.)

Jaynes would have us believe that spamming is protected speech under the U.S. First Amendment. The court didn't exactly say that, but concluded that the law as written was overly-broad, because it didn't explicitly differentiate between commercial speech and any other kind of speech (e.g., political expression).

While I agree that anti-spam laws shouldn't restrict political speech, I have a couple of issues with this decision:

1. Spam is spam, whatever the content; I'd hate this to be seen as a license for nut-jobs to fill my inbox with political rants.
2. Doesn't the U.S. constitution already make it clear that commercial speech isn't unprotected?

As I noted back in March, it was worrying that the previous decision was split 4-to-3.

Again, I say I find it really hard to believe that the American founding fathers intended my inbox be full of spam.

More at today's IT Blogwatch EXTRA...

Stephen Fry: Must Try Harder

Stephen Fry, we love you very much. You are a National Treasure.

But...

If you're going to expound the delights of free software, you could at least make an effort to pronounce Linus's name correctly.

Anyway, if you can't be bothered to muck about with Ogg Vorbis and such, I found this version of the video on the evil, unfree YouTube.



There's more at IT Blogwatch.

Video not displaying? Try this link.

Cisco buys Exchange-a-like vendor PostPath

Updated with more commentary 4.16pm UTC. Hello, Techmeme.

Suddenly, things are getting interesting again in the Exchange-alternatives market.

The quintessential growth-by-acquisition specialist, Cisco (CSCO), has just announced that it's acquiring PostPath.

Once again, Cisco makes a sound investment in an email technology vendor. Just like it did with IronPort. Great choice.

These are the clever guys who reverse-engineered the Exchange client protocol, MAPI/RPC, and the related on-the-wire details needed to make a vanilla install of Outlook talk to a non-Exchange mail server with full fidelity. Impressive stuff.

Despite Om Malik's analysis, this is quite a bit different from Zimbra.

Of all the other Exchange alternatives, PostPath has the most interesting architecture. And I say that as one who has years emotionally invested in the HP OpenMail technology ;-)

All the others rely on additional software on the desktop. In the case of OpenMail/SamsungContact/Scalix/Domino/etc., a MAPI service provider "plugin". Or, like Bynari/OpenXchange/etc., a separate app that synchronized an IMAP store with an Outlook.PST (personal store file).

I think Cisco fell out of love with Microsoft a while back. Something to do with VoIP support in Exchange and how Cisco thought it was Microsoft's partner but it turned out that Microsoft was competing with them. Nothing familiar there at all...

Sounds like Cisco wants to offer SaaS collaboration, based on PostPath and WebEx. Whoever said the email world has become dull and uninteresting?

Thanks to Jeff Brainard for the tip.

"Secure Resolutions" Sends Spam

Update August 25: Just a quick note. I'd appreciate it if shills for Secure Resolutions would stop emailing me to say I'm an ignorant idiot.

Update June 19: VerticalResponse has confirmed that Secure Resolutions's account is now closed and banned. Well done, guys.

Yesterday, I got email from some company called Secure Resolutions.

We are contacting you because you are currently a customer or you have been a customer and we would like to continue to be your supplier of anti-malware and backup protection. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our award winning, patented technology...

etc., etc., etc.

Trouble is, I've never heard of them, and the role account they sent it to is incapable of being a "customer" of anyone. Yes, friends: ergo, this email was spam.

(Incidentally, there seems to be some connection between this company and Panda Security, who I've also caught spamming.)

The company uses VerticalResponse to send this spam, so I shot a note to their abuse alias and got an encouraging note back from their Email Delivery & Policy Enforcement team. VR says it has "completely disabled" the Secure Resolution's account and "opened an investigation."

Watch this space for updates.

Anyone else had problems with this sender?

Scott Richter Settles Another Spam Suit

Oh looky, it's our "friends" Steve and Scott Richter in the news again. This time, they've settled with MySpace for $6 million after being accused of spamming thousands of MySpace.com users -- and using phished accounts to do it (see today's IT Blogwatch for more).

Of course, Scott gave up spamming some time ago. Or did he? Brian Krebs today offers an interesting investigation into domain registrations of spamvertised Web sites:

More than three quarters of all Web sites advertised through spam are clustered at just 10 domain name registrars ... Out of the 15,000 spam-advertised domains we examined, nearly half -- 7,142 names -- were registered through a Broomfield, Colo. company called Dynamic Dolphin ... the seventh most-popular registrar among spammers ... [and] owned by a company called CPA Empire, which in turn is owned by Media Breakaway LLC. The CEO of Media Breakaway is none other than Scott Richter, the once self-avowed "Spam King" who claims to have quit the business. Anti-spam groups also have recently implicated Media Breakaway in the alleged hijacking of more than 65,000 Internet addresses for use in sending e-mail and hosting commercial Web sites.

Remember kids, Rule #1: Spammers lie.