Anti-Spam Bill Introduced in Congress

Two U.S. Senators, Conrad Burns of Montana and Ron Wyden of Oregon, have reintroduced an e-mail anti-spam bill that will allow fines for spammers of unsolicited e-mails of up to $10 per e-mail. Known as the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing), the Act requires senders of unsolicited e-mails to include addresses where recipients can respond that they do not want to receive e-mail from that sender. If the e-mail 'spammer' continues to send unsolicited e-mail to that e-mail address, they could face a fine of $10 per e-mail, up to a fine of $500,000. Spammers who are found by a Court to "willingly and knowingly" violate the Act could be fined up to $1.5 million; and there are criminal provisions with up to a year of jail time for spammers who use misleading header information in unsolicited commercial e-mails.

An earlier version of CAN-SPAM was introduced in the past two Congressional sessions, but failed to make it to the full Senate floor. The CAN-SPAM Act will mainly reduce spam from U.S. spammers, since the CAN-SPAM Act is U.S. legislation.

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