Senate Passes Anti-Spam Bill

Zendar writes "Yahoo! is reporting that the 'U.S. Senate passed the first national anti-spam bill on Wednesday, giving momentum to an issue that has riled consumers almost as much as dinnertime phone calls.' However, the bill, referred to as the 'Can Spam' bill, is unlikely to pass the House and be signed by the President. Senator John McCain sums it up: 'The odds of defeating spam by legislation alone is extremely low, but that does not mean we should stand idly by and do nothing about it.' CNN also has the story."

Comments

Re:Politicians for Ya

[Steve B]

The battle on spam must be fought on all available fronts

A legal front that ought to be opened is the application of existing computer-crime laws to certain spamming techniques. The deployment of trojans to create open relays and even outright spamboxes is an obvious example.

Additionally, the use of forged headers, munged words, etc to evade spam filters is arguably a form of cracking in and of itself -- what is it, if not a deliberate attempt to use someone else's computer without the owner's permission, and indeed against the owner's express prohibition?

For those of you interested...

[Misch]

For those of you interested, the bill is S.877

CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Email) opposes this bill.

The bill isn't "Can Spam" in terms of canning spam. It's "Can Spam" in terms of "You Can Spam. Sure. Go ahead." It's opt-out, not opt-in. Prepare to have your mailbox flooded. Legally.

Sec. 105 (a):

(4) PROHIBITION OF TRANSMISSION OF UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL AFTER OBJECTION- If a recipient makes a request using a mechanism provided pursuant to paragraph (3) not to receive some or any unsolicited commercial electronic mail messages from such sender, then it is unlawful

(5) INCLUSION OF IDENTIFIER, OPT-OUT, AND PHYSICAL ADDRESS IN UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission of any unsolicited commercial electronic mail message to a protected computer unless the message provides--

On the other hand, Sec. 105 (b) (1) (A) (i) and (ii) make it illegal to use address harvesters or dictionary attacks to send spam.

I'm also worried that Sec. 105 (e)'s restrictions on sexually explicit advertising will be struck down as unconstitutional, and may have adverse effects on the rest of the law.