The first federal law against unsolicited commercial e-mail is a step closer to reality today after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would punish spammers with fines and jail time.
The House voted 392-5 in favor of the bill, which clears it for a vote in the Senate. If the Senate approves the bill, it should reach the White House early next week, said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.). "Five years ago spam was a nuisance and now it's a nightmare," said long-time spam fighter Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.). "I think today is a great victory for consumers in America. For the first time Americans who use the Internet and get e-mail will have the right to say ... take me off your list."
| There are 370 messages in my "deleted" box at the moment, five legitimate messages in my inbox. I'd say things are out of hand. |
The legislation would empower the Federal Trade Commission to establish a national "do-not-spam" list similar to the anti-telemarketing "do-not-call" list, and it would impose stiff jail sentences on e-mail marketers who violate the law. The compromise bill would also preempt tougher anti-spam laws already passed by the states.
| I wonder if it also prohibits scraping websites for e-mail addresses? |
FTC Chairman Timothy Muris has questioned the feasibility of a do-not-spam registry, saying it would be cumbersome to administer and wouldn't stop rogue spammers from sending unwanted mail.
| It'd be easier to administer than the "do not call" list. Call me if you need help. Be prepared to give me money. Eliminating any "legitimate" spammers — assuming there are any — leaves only the rogues to deal with, and they should be put out of business. I'm thinking tar and feathers, but I guess that's not feasible. |
Nevertheless, Muris today vowed to work with Congress as well as state and federal authorities to enforce the bill. "I appreciate the changes that the Congress made in the final bill to provide the Commission with useful tools that will enhance our ability to bring law enforcement actions against spam," Muris said in a prepared statement. The legislation would make it a crime — punishable by up to five years in jail — for e-mail marketers to mask their identities by falsifying their return addresses.
| Current practice involves scraping legit addresses and using them as the return addresses in the spams. The real people take the nasty messages and have their IP addresses blocked, while the spammers get their one-hit-in-a-million. |
Stiffening an anti-spam bill approved by the Senate last month, the compromise version would double the largest fines that could be imposed against spammers from $1 million to $2 million and remove a loophole that would have allowed marketers to dodge key provisions of the bill in cases where they have existing relationships with consumers, said Jennifer O'Shea, spokeswoman for Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
| Yeah. We've all "opted in" at some point, usually the point where our e-mail addresses went on our web sites... |
Anti-spam advocates are unhappy because the deal struck today would invalidate tougher state anti-spam laws. California and Washington, for example, allow people to sue spammers, whereas the federal bill does not. California's law also allows fines against spammers of up to $1,000 per e-mail message with a cap at $1 million. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, opposed the state preemption language and supported giving consumers the right to sue. Nevertheless, he defended the bill.
| Give me half a chance and I'd be suing the pants off somebody... |
"This is a good bill. There are things that we could have done that are a little better, but this is a piece of legislation that is going to solve a concern of the American people," he said. Some anti-spam experts also are skeptical of the congressional effort because it caters to groups like the Direct Marketing Association, which they consider to be not much different from fly-by-night anonymous spammers.
The DMA, which for many years opposed anti-spam legislation, has been eager to get a federal bill on the books to protect their members from an increasingly thorny set of state-level anti-spam laws. The DMA supported the bill, but raised some concerns with the do-not-spam list, which they feared would harm "legitimate" marketers, while doing nothing to stop less scrupulous marketers. Rather than telling marketers to stop sending unsolicited messages, the bill creates a legal framework for e-mail marketers, and that sends the wrong message, said John Mozena, the co-founder of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE). "The problem today is not that there's too much unregulated spam, the problem is that there's too much spam in general," Mozena said. |