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Senate approves anti-spam bill.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to outlaw deceptive "spam" e-mail, and set up a "do-not-spam" registry for those who do not want to receive unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Internet "spammers" who flood e-mail inboxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes could face jail time and million-dollar fines under the bill, which passed by a vote of 97 to 0.

The vote marks the first time the Senate has taken action against an online scourge that now accounts for 50 percent of all e-mail traffic, frustrating consumers and costing businesses bandwidth and productivity.

Similar legislation in the House of Representatives stalled as lawmakers try to hammer out differences between two competing bills. The Bush Administration said it supported the bill.

Senators noted that spam has become a top constituent concern and could overwhelm the Internet if left unchecked.

"Every day the Senate delays, big-time spammers [get] another opportunity to crank up their operations to even more dizzying levels of volume," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a sponsor of the bill.

"I don't go to a town hall meeting, I don't meet a friend who doesn't say, 'Take care of that spam,"' said Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, another bill sponsor.

The bill would not outlaw all unsolicited commercial e-mail, focusing instead on the fraudulent or deceptive messages estimated to make up two-thirds of all unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Marketers who falsify return addresses or routing information, hide their pitches behind misleading subject lines such as "Re: your request" or promote body-enhancement pills or other fraudulent products would face jail sentences of up to a year and fines of up to $1 million; repeat offenders could face jail terms of up to five years.

Marketers would have to label sexually explicit messages to allow users to filter them out.

The bill would also prohibit marketers from sending unsolicited messages to consumers who place their e-mail addresses on a "do-not-spam" registry, similar to the popular "do-not-call" anti-telemarketing measure launched earlier this month by the Federal Trade Commission .

Marketers could e-mail addresses not on the list until asked to stop.

Other common spammer tactics, such as hijacking users' identities, using multiple accounts to evade filters, and sending messages to millions of randomly generated e-mail addresses, would be outlawed as well.

State and federal law enforcers and Internet service providers such as EarthLink, Inc. would be allowed to pursue spammers, but individual users could not sue directly.

More than half of U.S. states have passed anti-spam bills of their own, many of which set tougher regulations for marketers.

The bill would preempt most state laws, but would allow states to set higher penalties for deceptive or fraudulent activity if they wished.

bill anti-spam approves Senate

That's all well in good, but how will they enforce this?  The internet is a world wide organization.  What jurisdiction do they have if the spam is coming from Canada or Germany for example?

I suppose it is a start, but since it says individuals cannot sue directly, how do they plan to even know when it is happening?  Do they think the companies participating in this will just obey because they are told they must.  Sounds more like an attempt to appease constituents by saying, "look what we did."  I am not convinced they can really do much to stop it.

In addition, do they plan to set up and fund an organization to pursue offenders of this new policy?  How much money will the government be willing to spend to prevent this annoyance?  How much should they spend?

Look how many new computer viruses are introduced each day.  How often do we hear of them finding the culprits.  It happens, but not very often.  In my personal experience I find a virus is a greater threat to an individual's PC than a piece of spam.  Spam is inconvenient, but it won't destroy the data on a PC.    :comp

Just my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

Senate approves anti-spam bill. History & Civil Business Politics

I think that it's great that they want to go after the people who spam.  But I begin to wonder how it's gonna be enforced as well.  Spam is a huge pain in the dark side of the moon, but I look at it like tenaheff does.  It won't harm my puter as bad as a virus will.  They should put a cap on spammers and then start tracking down hackers and virus makers.

But til then, I keep my email filters set high and always watch what email I do open.