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Congress Sends Anti-Spam Bill To White House
sunbird writes "At just after 5 o'clock EST, the House concurred to the Senate's amendments to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (or "CAN-SPAM") (bill in PDF format: here or here). Although the bill will prohibit certain tactics (such as hiding return addresses), critics state that the bill does not go far enough (see this press release). The bill will provide criminal penalties for violations of its provisions (up to five years behind bars), but will not allow private parties to sue spammers. News reports indicate (SF Gate or Forbes) that Bush intends to sign the bill. Prior Slashdot articles are here: 1 2 3."
The ability for private parties to sue spammers when there is a documented attempt to stop it might help. Most people can't do it, but there are enough people who know what they're doing to be able to track the actual individuals down that it would seem to be helpful.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
...it gives each marketer in the United States one free shot at each consumer's e-mail inbox
Can a subcontracted person be defined as a 'marketer'? I.E., Joe Spammer pays 'John Smith' $50 to one-time spam 3,000,000 addresses from his email account. 'John Smith' uses a valid return address but abandons account after the dirty deed is done. Technically within the law?
well watch soon the spammers will sue you for blocking their spam as it blocks legally protected interstate trade.
I should note one interesting wrinkle. Unlike what is common in other Federal laws, the act "supersedes any statute, regulation, or rule of a State or political subdivision of a State " but says _nothing_ about the District of Columbia. Soooo, if people can rally the DC council to pass a California-like law, perhaps there may be a new place to host your mail servers.
A final copy of the act can be found on my website. http://www.hypertouch.com/legal/s877-eas.html
I'm pretty pessimistic about things right now. Here are my chief concerns about the bill.
1."I CAN SPAM " Act legalizes unlimited spam -- even after"opt-outs "
The "SEPARATE LINES OF BUSINESS OR DIVISIONS " clause in the act permits spammers to send repeatedly to you even after you've opted out as long as they change domain names, a.k.a. lines of business.
The impression we have is that the DMA asked for this so that one cannot opt out of spam from the Fortune 500 by giving notice to their corporate HQ, you have to track down each"Division. " But more to the glorious point from the Viagra spammers perspective, see what happens if I opt out of a spam for today's mail bin: (picked at random)
By my sending email (or going to Prosize-Health.biz or whatever hoops they choose to put up for their process), I can"opt out. " However that spammer will be able to spam me LEGALLY from all of their other lines of business, e.g. Biggersize-health.biz, etc. Note that the spammer's email only represents itself as Prosize-Health.biz... All they have to do is spend $7 every couple of weeks for a new domain for their new"Line of Busines " (they might even bother to call it a new Division) and they are home free. There is NOTHING I can do to stop this. I can track down every big spammer and personally serve them with an opt-out, but that doesn't trickle down to their thousands of "Divisions. "
Let's be clear -- Spammers are already talking about this open license on their bulletin boards and mailing lists.
2."I CAN SPAM " punishes only the spammer, not the marketer
By rotating through US based spammers, or using untraceable overseas spammers, often in Russia or China, businesses will be allowed to advertise via spam with abandon. The great strength of the upcoming California law is that is target both the marketer and the spammer. That will be gone when California laws are made void. For example, we have been trying to get Discover Credit Card to stop sending spam to us for over 18 months. They literally just regularly rotate through new
The biggest problem with spam is the deception and confusion. This is also the biggest problem in all advertising, and something the US government tries hard to minimize. This bill speaks specifically two three issues on this. It requires that addresses be gathered overtly, and not harvested or guessed. It requires that the headers be true. It requires the content conform to current laws, and in particular requires adult content to be marked. This is similiar to existing laws. Such laws have been used to by the AG to punish direct mail and telemarketing firms.
It is unrealistic to assume that the Congress will ban commercial email. We would like something like confirmed opt-in and the like, but that may come later. Look at it this way. The drive to make telemarketers behave themselves has been going on for a very long time. As it has become clear that they do not and will not respect the wishes of the public, more aggresive laws have been passed to make them behave, until the most recent laws threaten to destroy the industry. This was the right and proper sequence of events. I think we can realiable expect the spammers to show the same disrespect and greed, and therefore can expect increasingly strict laws.
As far as the non-US mailer problems, that will can not really be solved by the congress.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
There's been a last-minute change in the bill. The version passed by the Senate and approved by the House was to take effect 120 days after enactment. A last-minute change makes the bill effective January 1, 2004. This prevents California's tough anti-spam law from being in effect for over three months.