A new U.S. House spam-socking bill includes a provision to make it a federal crime to spam porn, unless the spammer is in line with regulations being left to the Federal Trade Commission to compose.
And those who violate the porn spam provision could be hit with prison terms of up to two years, according to the bill's language.
This measure is part of a bill being called "Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act," written by Rep. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina). CNET.com said May 23 the Burr has the best chance of any anti-spam measure to pass the full House, since it has two powerful committee chairmen supporting it: House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Billy Tauzin (R-Louisiana) and House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin).
The bill would ban unsolicited e-mail without letting recipients unsubscribe, valid return e-mails and street addresses, and makes plain that the message is a solicitation, CNET said. Those opting out may not be contacted again by the spammer for three years. Internet service providers would be allowed to sue for damages equaling $10 per each mail sent to an opted-out recipient with a maximum of $500,000, and a judge deciding the spammer did it knowingly could triple the damages to $1.5 million, the tech news Website added..
The bill would also let state attorneys general sue over false header information up to $3 million, under FTC and U.S. Justice Department jurisdiction, and they would also get more power to sue those who didn't include legitimate identification in the spam messages.
The Burr bill emerged just as California's state Senate passed a measure to make it a crime to send spam and to let recipients sue spammers they can identify for $500 per spam message. Written by state Sen. Debra Bowen (R-Redondo Beach), this could become one of the toughest spam-fighting laws in the United States, assuming it passes the state Assembly and embattled Gov. Gray Davis signs the bill.
Earlier this year, a bill began making the rounds in the Arkansas legislature to force porn spammers to include warnings, be traceable to commercial distributors, and include a sender's actual name, address, and source computer identification number. And there isn't as much sympathy for porn spammers around the professional adult Internet as some might believe.
"They're sending this stuff indiscriminately, and they're sending materials that are offensive to recipients, and those people are calling their Congressmen," Free Speech Coalition Bill Lyon told AVN Online earlier this year, in as much a warning as a factual analysis of the porn spammers. "You can't send a little blue-haired lady in Pasadena pictures of people screwing and not expect her not to react by calling anyone she can think of."
Lyon had added, however, that one problem lawmakers might run into is the volume of porn spam originating outside the United States. "Nothing we do is going to control that," he said. "?And you can't determine how much is the offshore stuff. But it's not letting up."
