US House, Senate Agree on Anti-Spam Bill

Folic_Acid writes "Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, has announced that the House and the Senate have reached a deal to both pass an anti-spam bill, the first ever federal anti-spam law in the United States. Specifically, the law contains: opt-out, authority for the FTC to set up a "Do-Not-SPAM" registry, criminal charges for fraudulent spam, including five years in prison, statutory damages of $2 million for violations, tripled to $6 million for intentional violations, unlimited damages for fraud and abuse." News.com has a copy of the bill and a story.

Comments

The RIAA/MPAA has their mitts in this one too!

[corebreech]

Go to http://thomas.loc.gov and do a bill search on "anti-spam" and read the Senate version, from which I quote:

...the term `unsolicited commercial electronic mail message' does not include an electronic mail message sent by or on behalf of one or more lawful owners of copyright, patent, publicity, or trademark rights to an unauthorized user of protected material notifying such user that the use is unauthorized and requesting that the use be terminated or that permission for such use be obtained from the rights holder or holders.

Unbelievable.

Re:SPAM fines

[proj_2501]

that says INTENTIONAL not INTERNATIONAL

Office Space, anyone?...

[Loki_1929]

"including five years in [Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass] prison"

Bet someone's going to regret pushing all those penis patches (of grow 3 inches! fame).

Re:How?

[peezer]

I think that congress (and your average citizen) believes that legislation is the solution to most problems. The SPAM wars will be fought and won with innovative technology, not with legislation. Don't get me wrong, some of the acts spammers engage in should definitely be illegal. But they should be illegal on principled grounds, no on the hope of detterence.

Re:Translated version

[GreyPoopon]

If anyone wants to hear that in English, it sounds like they're saying that the MPAA- and RIAA- bots don't count as SPAM.

They do if the the intended recipient of the mail is not, indeed, using said protected material unlawfully. Hmmmmmm. This could be VERY interesting the next time they make a mistake on the identity of the alleged pirate.

Unlimited damages

[Space cowboy]

...reminds me of an NDA from Sony I signed in a previous life. Buried deep in the middle of it was the phrase (from memory)

"Should PARTNER at any time divulge material covered by this agreement, then financial reparation may not be sufficient"...

(No, the NDA wasn't under the NDA - do you think I'd be telling you this, if it was ???)

I never did get clarification on what non-financial reparations would be demanded (first-born son?, ritual dismemberment ?)

Simon.

This is a BAD bill

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a BAD bill... it preempts all state spam laws -- some of which are actually decent, and let US the CONSUMERS go after the spammers instead of depending on fat, lazy, guberment morons to do it.

Don't preempt the SPAM state laws!!!

Re:Finally!

[revmoo]

No, It's a _horrible_ idea. Two things.

(1.) U.S. Laws only reach as far as U.S. borders. Where does 95% of spam come from?

(2.) What is to stop spammers(who have previously shown themselves to be willing to break the law and root people's servers to use as relays) from using this Do-not-spam list as a database to spam? I mean, think about it, a nice, large index of completely valid email addresses? This is spammer gold people!