Right on the heels of an anti-spam survey we reported earlier Tuesday, the House of Representatives begins considering a bill to create a nationwide list of people who do not want spam coming into their e-mail.
New Mexico Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson wrote the Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act of 1999. The bill would have the Federal Communications Commission make and maintain the list, penalizing those who send spam to those who've put their names on the list.
The bill would also allow spam recipients on the list for 30 days to sue for $500 per piece of spam. Those found guilty of "willingly or knowingly" violating FCC orders to stop spamming could be fined three times that amount, CNET says.
The measure is considered by some as skirting near restrictions on free speech. But others say such a measure is too long due. Millions of unsolicited ads and messages are sent to millions of Internet users monthly, many of them connected to the adult entertainment industry despite the industry itself coming more toward taking a negative view of the practice.
In fact, at ia2000 earlier this month, a few seminar panels warned outright that spam was not the best or most intelligent way to build and sustain a customer base for adult Web sites or other adult businesses.
The Wilson bill also would criminalize the sending of mail without a valid return address identifying where a recipient can send mail asking not to be sent more spam. And one of the spammer's most effective defensive weapons is including false return addresses. The bill would also let ISPs charge spammers for the costs of transmitting spam.
"It puts the power in the hands of the recipient," Wilson tells CNET. "But the idea here is you don't ban commercial email, you don't restrict freedom of speech, and ISPs shouldn't be required to carry [spam] without compensation."
This kind of opt-out thinking still draws fire from anti-spam groups, who say they prefer laws banning spam outright. CNET says some prefer a so-called opt-in system, in which senders of commercial mail cannot send spam unless the recipient has asked to receive such mailings first.
Otherwise, these groups reject creating an FCC-maintained list. "We're concerned about this bill because it gives the FCC a whole bunch of regulatory authority, including the duty of maintaining a list of everyone in the U.S. that doesn't want junk e-mail," said John Mozena, head of the Committee Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), to CNET. "That scares us. And ISPs in general don't want to deal with the FCC."
Wilson says, though, that the postal service for decades has maintained a similar opt-out list for postal commercial mail. And she criticized a competing House bill that would ban spam outright.
"I think there's value in getting unsolicited commercial email and using the Internet for commerce, just like I like getting a catalog in the mail I didn't ask for," Wilson tells CNET. "It's true that ISPs and their advocacy groups would rather have an outright prohibition, but I don't think that would withstand a constitutional challenge on basis of free speech."
For now, individual states have taken on the anti-spam legislative lead. But Wilson sounds encouraged for her bill's prospects, CNET says, with the congresswoman citing her position on the powerful Commerce Committee and the bill's bipartisan sponsorship.
Earlier Tuesday, AVN On The Net told you about a survey sponsored by CAUCE and Survey.com in which 76 percent of those polled said they favor some kind of government regulation against spam.
