IP: E-Mail Spam

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Gerald Ballman" <ballman () usna edu>
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 08:26:23 -0400
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: E-Mail Spam

Congress proposes to fight e-mail spam

By LANCE GAY
Scripps Howard News Service
May 09, 2002

WASHINGTON - Spam - those annoying and unwanted commercial messages
that cram your e-mail box each
day - is projected to triple in the next five years.

And although members of Congress vow new laws will crack down on
unwanted spam, industry experts say
there is very little that can be done to stop the torrent of unwanted
pornography offers, invitations to join get-rich
schemes, and free gift offers.

Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana, ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce
telecommunications
subcommittee, says he now has sufficient votes to get his panel to pass
new legislation to curb spam by
requiring e-mail marketers to include a working address in their
message so people who get them can ask their
names to be taken off the mailing list, and providing the Federal Trade
Commission with authority to impose
fines of up to $10 for each unlawful message up to a maximum of
$500,000.

"This is a necessary step if we want to put an end to the rampant
hyper-marketing choking the Internet," Burns
said.

Some Internet privacy activists say the proposal doesn't go far enough,
and business lobbyists are trying to
scuttle the measure, fearing it opens the door to more federal
regulation of the Internet.

Surveys show that the spam plague is worsening. Jupiter Media Metrix, a
company that monitors Internet
business trends, predicts that spam will triple current levels by 2006,
with the average e-mail recipient receiving
1,400 messages a year. The first spam was sent only in 1997.

John Mozena, a spokesman for the Coalition Against Unsolicited
Commercial E-mail, a volunteer group
established in 1997 to fight spam, said Congress should require
e-mailers to get advance permission from
Internet users before they can blitz people with e-mails, instead of
requiring recipients of unwanted e-mails to try
to get off lists after they have received the message.

He warned that Internet users have not yet seen the full marketing
forces at work. If only 1 percent of the 24
million small businesses in the United States launched an e-mail
campaign, that would mean 657 messages in
each person's e-mail box each day, he said. "And all of that that would
be legal under the bill."

Mozena said e-mail is one of the most popular technologies developed
with the Internet, but warned it could
become so burdened down with junk e-mail that people could stop using
it. There is currently no effective
software available that can block all unwanted e-mail, although some
programs cut down on volume, and some
major Internet providers offer to block random messages sent from some
known mass-mailers.

The messages aren't cost-free to employers, who pay for the
proliferation of spam through purchasing new
computers capable of handling the large amount of data that imaged
e-mail contains, and the lost productivity of
employees weeding out messages they don't want or need.

Burns aide Eric Bovim put the cost to employers at about $400 per
in-box each year. "One of our main
concerns is that spam cuts down on productivity,'' Bovim said. He said
that rural Internet users also are paying
for the costs of unwanted mail because they are paying long-distance
phone bills to get e-mail.

Ray Everett-Church, a San Jose, Calif., lawyer who has battled
unsolicited e-mail since it started in 1997, said
one solution Congress should consider is a blanket ban on junk e-mail,
modeled on the 1991 law that banned
the sending of unwanted commercial faxes to business fax machines.

"There are scant few junk faxes today,'' Everett-Church noted.

On the Net: www.cauce.org


------ End of Forwarded Message

For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/