CNET: Senate approves antispam bill
NYT: Senate Votes to Crack Down on Some Spam
DM News: Senate Passes Anti-Spam Bill; Calls for Do-Not-Spam List
The Senate unanimously passed a bill that would create the email equivalent of the National Do-Not-Call Registry, make illegal the practice of using deceptive email subject lines, like "Re: info you requested" and force email marketers to include a distinguishing tag in their subject lines, such as "ADV."
The White House indicated it too would support the bill, removing what was previously seen as perhaps the highest hurdle to implementation. The House of Representative still has yet to introduce an equivalent measure, having spent the last congressional session bickering over two different anti-spam measures that only hint at the broad action taken in the Senate bill.
It may be de rigueur to criticize this and all the other anti-spam measures as useless - as the big spammers are already the mass-scale fraudsters that will continue to act fraudulently after these measures are passed - but making a bright line definition between legal and illegal email practices is a big help. It gives a new set of powers to prosecutors and even private companies that previously may have worried about the legal implications of blocking spam that was not yet considered illegal.
While the senate measure provides for up to three years of prison for offenders, a more effective enforcement mechanism would have let citizens sue spammers for statutory damages, ensuring that enforcement would happen outside the discretion given to - and often ignored by - busy federal prosecutors.
The amendment that gave the bill great political momentum seems to be the Charles Schumer (D-NY) sponsored measure that would require a No-Spam Registry be up and running within nine months. That the Senate proved unanimous in its vote probably indicates a wave of concern for the potent combination of vast constituent anger mixed with a quickly-nearing election day.
The senate bill also makes illegal using false identities, using multiple accounts for the purpose of evading filters, sending email to randomly generated or harvested email addresses and sending pornographic material without a subject line warning.
In order to pass into law, a bill in the House needs to be passed, reconciled with the senate version, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Handicappers on the Hill are saying that it might be too late for that to happen prior to election day, meaning that the bill may well not pass this session, but I tend to think that the House will get the lead out. While one third of Senators will face elections in November, every one of the congress critters will be up on the block. They don't want to go home to be beaten by the anti-spam bludgeon, and if they fail to pass a measure, it will be bloody back in the district.
