Will spam legislation work?

Advocacy groups say proposals will bring more spam

A bill introduced this month by Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, could lead to private lawsuits by allowing some spammers to be charged with racketeering offenses.  Everett-Church praised the bill for opening up the possibility of private lawsuits, but the Nelson bill still requires consumers to opt out of spam.

"It's the first that even hints of giving consumers, those who are victimized by spammers, any right of action," Everett-Church said of the Nelson bill. "The only problem is that it goes off the rails and requires an opportunity to opt out. The opt-out undoes all of the other benefits."

Others, including CAN-SPAM cosponsor Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, have questioned whether private lawsuits would help fight spam. Burns doesn't want to create more work for trial lawyers, his spokeswoman said.

Private lawsuits won't get at most spammers because they hide behind false identities, added J. Trevor Hughes, executive director of the Network Advertising Initiative, a cooperative of Internet advertisers. "Spammers spend their days looking for ways to technologically obscure their identities," Hughes said during Wednesday's hearing. "Pursuing spammers requires enormous technological, financial and investigative resources. Individuals do not have such resources, but governments and ISPs do."

Hughes also spoke out against those wanting a law requiring Internet advertisers to get opt-in permission from their customers. "Over the past few years, our industry has lost critical time debating this issue, while spam has been allowed to proliferate," said Hughes, whose group supports the CAN-SPAM bill, which outlaws deceptive e-mail headers and requires commercial e-mail to include opt-out instructions and a valid postal address.

"Let me make this perfectly clear: This (opt-in) debate, regardless of what standard is eventually adopted, will not result in a reduction of spam," Hughes added. "A spammer's stock and trade is in deception -- they do not care about whether they have permission from the recipient."

A major problem with creating federal antispam legislation is that many people can't agree on what spam is, said Eytan Urbas, vice president of Mailshell, a Santa Clara, Calif., company that markets an antispam software suite. In a March survey of more than 1,100 Mailshell customers, 97 percent of respondents agreed that spam was random commercial e-mail promoting pornography or unwanted business opportunities.

But 53 percent said any unwanted e-mail from companies the recipient had a prior relationship with is also spam, and 44 percent said a mass distribution of e-mail such as jokes or political views from someone they know personally is also spam.

Urbas also noted that 8 percent of respondents -- people who are customers of an antispam suite -- admitted to purchasing a product promoted to them through spam. The Mailshell survey is available at http://www.mailshell.com/mail/client/oem2.html/step/pr/article/17#2.

"I support legislation, but I am also concerned that it is not the quick fix that many people believe it is," Urbas said. "There's a lot that has to happen, including people stopping buying from them."