For those of you interested in the U.S. legal proceedings see below. I
personally believe this will have a negligible effect on spam, since most of
the spam we get here is advertising services that are legally questionable
anyway.
Senate passes anti-spam bill.
Spurred by the enormous public response to the FTC "Do Not Call"
Registry, the U.S. Senate has voted 97-0 to pass the Controlling the
Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003
("CAN-SPAM Act of 2003"). The bill (S. 877), sponsored by Senators
Conrad Burns (R-MT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), provides for both civil and
criminal penalties.
http://wyden.senate.gov/leg_issues/bills/s877_canspam.pdf
The civil penalties include:
**a requirement that senders of marketing e-mail to include a return
address so the consumer can tell them to stop
** a requirement that unsolicited messages include clear notification
that the message is an advertisement, and a valid physical postal
address
** a prohibition on false and deceptive headers and subject lines so
that consumers can immediately identify the true source of the
message, and so that Internet companies can identify the high-volume
senders of spam
** a provision to triple the monetary damages imposed on spammers who
engage in particularly nefarious spamming techniques such as using
automatic software programs to "harvest" e-mail addresses from Web
sites, and using "dictionary attack" software to send messages to a
succession of randomly generated e-mail addresses in search of real
recipients.
** strong enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission, state
Attorneys General, and Internet service providers (ISPs), with the
potential for multimillion-dollar judgments
The criminal provisions create penalties of up to 5 years in prison for:
** hacking into somebody else's computer to send bulk spam
** using "open relays" to send bulk spam with an intent to deceive
** falsifying header information in bulk spam
** registering for 5 or more e-mail accounts using false registration
information, and using these accounts to send bulk spam
** sending bulk spam from somebody else's Internet protocol addresses
The bill also requires the FTC to (a) report to Congress within 9
months with a plan to implement a "do-not-spam" list, similar to the
"do-not-call" list, (b) share any potential drawbacks or difficulties
with implementing such a list, (c) write rules for mandatory labeling
of pornographic messages, and (d) consider mandatory labeling for
unsolicited e-mail generally, as well as possible financial rewards
for tech-savvy citizens who help trace hard-to-find spammers. The
legislation also gives the FTC the authority to implement a
do-not-spam list. However, the FTC has expressed concerns that such a
registry would do more harm than good because unethical spammers
might exploit the massive listing to gather more e-mail addresses and
because a U.S. registry would not stop the many spammers who operate
from overseas with little fear of U.S. law enforcement.
A European Union anti-spam directive that also targets automatic
calling system unsolicited faxes went into effect last week.
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2002/l_201/l_20120020731en0037004
7.pdf
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