I sent this to Dave Farber in response to a post on Interesting People, but he never forwarded it on...

] I am at a total loss to see how one enforces this
] a world wide Internet. Seems to me that it forces
] the off shore of the spam industry. and does little
] to eliminate spam. Australia says 75% of their spam
] comes from China. How would this law help us again?

Although this law offers no solution to this problem that I can see, I might offer that there may be a need to enable local law enforcement agencies, who are tasked with dealing with small crimes and misdemeanors, to coordinate internationally at some point. Currently only serious cases of national importance can be raised to the level of international cooperation. If people can commit small crimes with impunity across borders then spam may only be the first popular example. A large number of small crimes can add up to a lot of money. Certainly we have the technology to enable more broad coordination between local law enforcement agencies. Will we have the need?

]] Anonymous advertising is an oxymoron. The point of ads
]] is to get people to buy stuff, so only makers or vendors
]] of the stuff that's advertised have an interest in doing
]] so, and if they can't find you, they can't to buy from you.
]] I suppose this would make "astroturf" fake grass-roots
]] campaigns harder, but I can't get too upset about that.

While I agree with John Levine's reading of the act, I think there are exceptions to this rule, which people on the Cypherpunks list have written about at length. This law does not just ban anonymous advertising. It bans any sort of anonymous business transaction via email. This means that it preemptively bans businesses which might operate behind anonymous remailers.

For example, one might imagine a time capsule service which accepts an anonymous ecash payment along with a document, and agrees to store it for a set amount of time. Once that time is up, the document is forwarded to a set email address. The service is run behind remailers so that once a document has been placed in the time capsule it cannot be removed until the time requested at the outset. This is just an example. Such a business would be illegal under this law, as it would need to send anonymous transactional email messages.

A more down to earth idea that has been explored in the past is the notion that individuals participating in an ebay style online auction might be able to rely on reputation systems rather then identification to establish trust, and engage in commerce, without compromising their personal privacy.

In short, the idea that there can be no legitimate anonymous business transaction is an over simplification. There is a question to ask here about whether we want to have a society in which people can engage in business without being traceable (which is currently possible, and always has been possible, with cash) or whether we wish to have the security associated with knowing that the police can always locate anyone we have ever done business with.

I don't wish to express any firm conclusion about this question. I
think there are interesting arguments on both sides. In any event, this has little at all to do with spam. I think it ought to be a separate policy discussion. Unfortunately, I think its too late now to do anything about it. Hopefully the courts will have the wisdom to see that such things were not envisioned by the people who crafted this act.