Forum Moderators: phranque
Its importance is that it a serious attempt to legislate against things that won't raise Constitutional issues. The FTC's estimate that 2 out of 3 spam emails contain misleading information of some sort or fraudulent offers or pornography.
This law if enacted as introduced will establish strong penalties for emailer that lie about their identities or engage in other deceptive tactics. Pornography would have to label as such in the subject line.
Emailers will be required to include their online and real postal addresses and to honor request to be removed from mailing list. Harvesting would be outlawed.
The teeth in this legislation is fines up to a million and a half dollars and jail sentences.
The law does not address the issue of solicited or unsolicited email messages but requires all commercial emailers follow the same set of rules.
The law avoids the quagmire of constitutional free speech issues that might take a decade to resolve in court. It is a smart move in my opinion that will give important relief now and does not stop additional legislation to deal with the UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) question.
The labelling requirements could easily be extended to advertizing e-mail in general as far as I am concerned. Such a law exists in Korea, for example, and since I started filtering those korean langeuage labels, I haven't seen a single spam from over there in my inbox (used to be half of the garbage I got).
Almost every one of these are from people cowardly hiding behind false return addresses or who cannot be traced. If these types of emails can be reduced substantially, I think everyone would feel better about commercial email, as long as it is targeted. I get so many emails re satellite tv services, pharmaceuticals, and business propositions that given my location and gender just dont apply.
The scummiest of the scummiest are those that pretend that they know you or scare the living deaylights out of you.. such as "Your debt", "Your sccount is about to expire" or "Urgent message for your mother", "Breaking News - Iraq (ad for viagra)" etc ad nauseum.
These guys only escape a mass lynching becuase people dont know how to find them.
Under the US Constitution, the US Congress has the sole right to regulate interstate commerce. States may only attack spam that has a presence within their State. Many of the laws by States are clearly unconstitutional. They go unenforced so unchallenged and were passed primarily for the political gains of local politicians. Federal legislation will pre-empt these statues.
The experience with the half dozen Federal attempts at banning Child Pornography, which all have been declared unconstitutional except the present law which is suspended pending resolution of the constitutionality issues; has motivated some anti-spam advocates to push for relief legislation that does not have constitutional issues.
What can be attacked? Two-thirds of all spam contains false or misleading identification. This can be banned. Fraud can be banned. Porn can be required to be labeled.
Not in the current legislation but possible once this legislation is passed is the banning of the use of credit cards in this type of mail.
Further, Congress is beginning to press the Justice Department to treat the 150 to 200 Criminal Enterprises that account for the majority of spam under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statues.
Spam can be controlled without giving up Freedom of Speech in the US. Attacking the source of their money, the credit cards, can stop international spammers. But first it must be ruled illegal.
