The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the nation’s first federal anti-spam legislation Wednesday. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, targets the most objectionable senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail by prohibiting messages that advertise financial scams, fraudulent body-enhancement products and pornography.
The legislation also criminalizes the techniques used by spammers to thwart detection, which include disguising identities, masking the locations of computers used to send junk e-mail and automating spam attacks.
Especially controversial is the fact that the federal bill would preempt all state anti-spam laws, some of which are tougher than the Burns-Wyden bill. It also prohibits private lawsuits against spammers, allowing suits only by providers of e-mail accounts, such as Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., EarthLink Inc. and America Online Inc., all of which market to their own members.
“We are especially pleased that the bill preempts state spam laws,” H. Robert Wientzen, president and corporate executive officer of the Direct Marketing Association, said in a statement. “The current patchwork of state laws has become a punishing compliance challenge for law-abiding marketers while doing nothing to reduce the amount of spam in consumers’ inboxes.”
After months of negotiations, the bill passed this week includes a provision that directs the Federal Trade Commission to come up with a plan for a no-spam registry.
Provisions, like a no-spam registry, however, are very controversial. The same arguments, particularly the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment right to freedom of speech, surrounding the Federal Trade Commission’s do-not-call list for telemarketers, apply to the no-spam lists.
In the 2002 Wisconsin legislative session, a similar anti-spam bill was introduced but failed to pass. It called for the restriction of unsolicited electronic mail. However, state Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, introduced SB 36, which again restricts a solicitor from making an electronic mail solicitation to a person without his consent.
At the University of Wisconsin, the Division of Information Technology offers a filtering service for spam.
Messages to the student e-mail system Wiscmail are rated on the “likelihood that each message is spam,” and users who opt to use the filtering service are able to select a score for messages that they would like to have delivered to their “Junk Mail” folder in their account. There is a 15-day expiration timer for automatic deletion of these emails.
UW junior Caroline Peterson said she thinks the legislation is great because of the annoyance of spam.
“I think it interferes with people’s personal life because it enters our personal e-mail accounts,” Peterson said. “Sometimes it’s very disgusting and a violation of people’s privacy. It’s very evasive.”
Currently, FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris has opposed a no-spam registry, arguing that it would be unenforceable because spammers would ignore it and that it would be hard to keep the e-mail addresses secure. Additionally, most spammers are based overseas.
“A do-not-email list is not the silver bullet to stopping spam, and Congress should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater,” Wientzen said. “Our members and other legitimate marketers across the country, respect consumers’ preferences and adhere to the pillars of responsible e-mail.”
