The United States Congress was on the verge on Monday of approving the first law aimed at curbing the onslaught of unsolicited e-mail, or spam, but reactions from the technology community were mixed.
The House of Representatives on Saturday voted 392-5 for the Can-Spam Act of 2003 providing penalties for the most deceptive kinds of unsolicited marketing e-mail.
The Senate passed a similar bill targeting junk e-mail last month. The two chambers were expected to send a measure to the president this week.
The House-passed bill requires e-mail solicitations to have an ”opt-out” link to click on, prohibits the sending of fraudulent spam and introduces stiff fines for illegal spam messages.
In addition, people who flood the internet with unsolicited advertisements can be sued under the legislation for damages of up to $2-million, an amount that can be tripled to $6-million for intentional violations.
Some big tech firms including America Online and Microsoft hailed lawmakers for the measure, saying it would help consumers escape the deluge of unwanted e-mail clogging their in-boxes.
But some analysts said the current legislative efforts may not achieve the desired result and may even encourage spam.
”This legislation will be bad news for all computer users. The US authorities had the opportunity to make a real stand against spam, but through attempting to come to a compromise with the direct mail industry they have only managed to create an enormous fudge,” said Graham Cluley, of the software firm Sophos.
”This bill acts as a green light for any company considering sending unsolicited e-mail to millions of innocent users. Now they know they can go ahead, completely legally, as long as they include a message offering ‘opt-out’ at the end. This won’t reduce the amount of spam people are likely to receive at all. If anything, it may make things worse.”
Mike Adams, president of Arial Software, said the measure would encourage a ”new breed of spam” that ”fully complies with federal law.”
”Clearly, we need a better law,” Adamas said. ”While this anti-spam legislation addresses the most fraudulent forms of spam, it also sadly legitimises an entire class of e-mail solicitations that most people still consider spam.”
The software filtering firm Clearswift said that in the United States, total spam exceeded total non-spam e-mail in July 2003.
The US administration supports the latest bill, but said it is only one of many steps in the fight against spam.
”The bill proposed for final passage will be a useful step in helping consumers and businesses to combat unsolicited commercial e-mail,” said a join statement from the Departments of Commerce and Justice.
”The administration believes that problems with spam cannot be solved by federal legislation alone. The development and adoption of new technologies will also be necessary.”
America Online said in a statement the bill ”will be a significant weapon for the online industry in the ongoing fight to can the spam and thwart the spam kingpins.” – Sapa-AFP