Spam -- scourge of e-mail inboxes nationwide -- is beginning to make enemies in the hallowed halls of Congress.
After years of leaving the bulk of enforcement to state governments, federal legislators are turning up the heat in the fight against spam, with two recent Senate proposals that would subject chronic spammers to criminal charges.
The latest plan, introduced this week by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), is an attempt to curtail what its author describes as an "epidemic" of junk mail that takes residents of New York City alone more than 4 million hours a year to eliminate.
In addition to authorizing fines and prison time for "severe repeat offenders," Schumer wants to create a national no-spam registry, modeled after do-not-call list legislation enacted this year that enables people to avoid getting calls from telemarketers.
Schumer's legislation differs slightly from the Can-Spam Act of 2003, introduced earlier this month by Senators Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The Burns-Wyden bill does not call for a do-not-spam list, but does propose fines, along with prison terms of up to one year, for spammers who knowingly send unwanted mail with false or misleading headers.
The proposals come as market research data indicates the junk e-mail problem is getting serious.
Marten Nelson, an analyst with Ferris Research, a San Francisco firm, estimates that corporations in the United States will incur costs of approximately $10 billion this year due to lost productivity, network expense and tech support inquiries resulting from spam.
But although the principle behind proposed federal legislation is drawing a warm reception from anti-spam activists, many doubt its practicality. While it's easy to outlaw spam, it's rather difficult to catch the outlaws who send it.
"Pinning down a spammer is like trying to nail down Jell-O," said Robert Bulmash, president of the privacy rights group Private Citizen. Bulmash said he is skeptical that a do-not-spam list would be as effective as the anti-telemarketing registry.
Spammers tend to hide originating information, send messages from computers that are not their own, and point to websites that disappear a few days after a mass mailing. Moreover, bulk e-mailers often operate overseas, making it easier to evade the long arm of the law.
Bulmash was more supportive of proposals to sentence the most virulent spammers to jail time, saying it would send a message to unscrupulous e-mail marketers.
Another problem with the do-not-spam list idea, said Ferris' Nelson, is that it could expose e-mail addresses to hacks by unethical spammers. Bulk e-mailers would see such a list as a gold mine, because all the addresses it contained presumably would be valid.
Such concerns haven't stopped legislators outside the federal government from considering the list approach. Legislation introduced in both Colorado and Missouri would create a central database of residents who don't want to receive unsolicited e-mail.
The Colorado Junk E-Mail Law would require companies to pay an annual fee of up to $500 to access the registry. It also would award consumers $10 plus attorney's fees for each unwanted message they receive, assuming they are willing to take the spammer to court.
In Missouri, companies would have free access to the list, but residents would be able to sue marketers for up to $5,000 for violating it.
In order for anti-spam suits to work, however, judges must show consistency in how they interpret the law, said Bennett Haselton, a Washington resident who has filed dozens of cases against spammers under a state anti-spam statute. He claims to have received widely differing interpretations of state law from judges who've heard his cases in small claims court.
Haselton said he "applauded" efforts by Schumer and other legislators to reduce spam, but was doubtful that new laws alone would be much help, since spammers are notoriously difficult to track down and prosecute.
"If anti-spam laws were easy to enforce in court, the problem would already be taken care of," he said.
