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By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
A bill designed to reduce the reams of unwanted e-mail -- or spam -- clogging the nation's in-boxes today cleared its last major hurdle on the way to the White House.
The U.S. Senate approved the Can Spam Act as part of its attempt to wrap up business before departing for the Thanksgiving recess.
The bill is essentially the same as the one that the House of Representatives passed in a 392-5 vote last week.
President Bush intends to sign the legislation, according to a statement released by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), one of the first senators to sponsor a federal anti-spam bill, said on Tuesday that lawmakers began paying attention to the problem in the last 18 months as their constituents' complaints about an unstoppable deluge of e-mails advertising pornography, mortgage refinancing services and sexual aids started mounting.
The Can Spam bill finally gives consumers a measure of control over their in-boxes, Burns said.
The legislation would let the Federal Trade Commission establish a national do-not-spam list similar to the popular national do-not-call list. It also outlaws several common practices that spammers use to disguise the origins of their e-mail, including using falsified return addresses. Violators could face up to five years in prison and as much as $6 million in fines.
Burns said the spam bill wouldn't have a major effect on reducing the amount of spam in consumers' inboxes until a few major violators are prosecuted and fined or jailed. He said Congress would watch closely to ensure the legislation is properly enforced.
The legislation was propelled through Congress largely on the strength of some startling statistics about the growing tide of spam on the Internet. San Francisco-based anti-spam firm Brightmail estimates that unsolicited junk e-mail accounted for 54 percent of the mail in the nation's in-boxes as of September 2003, compared to 8 percent two years earlier.
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. Nevertheless, he said the commission would work with Congress and state and federal authorities to enforce the bill.
Anti-spam advocates are unhappy because the legislation would invalidate several state laws that are tougher on spam. 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.
Two of the five House lawmakers who opposed the bill were California Reps. Mike Honda (D) and Zoe Lofgren (D), who criticized the measure for undermining California's law, the most strict in the nation.
This bill has some points that are noteworthy but ultimately will have very little effect on addressing the problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail, Honda spokesman Jay Staunton said.
Anti-spam activists like John Mozena of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail say the legislation caters to groups like the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), whose members, they say, are contributing to the spam problem.
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 multiple state-level laws. The DMA supported the bill but raised some concerns with the do-not-spam list, which they feared would harm legitimate marketers.
Mozena said that the bill is misguided because it creates a legal framework for e-mail marketers instead of requiring them to stop sending unsolicited e-mail altogether.
Minor changes made to the congressional anti-spam bill in the Senate will require the House to vote once again on the measure before it can be sent to the White House. That vote is expected to happen when Congress returns after the Thanksgiving break.
© 2003 TechNews.com Source: WashingtonPostTech
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