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The following was originally posted on a Usenet Newsgroup, and is the opinion of the author.Greetings,
I am a constituent living in Jackson. I am also the medium level computer tech-support guy for my employer. In my private life and in my professional career, I have spent a considerable amount of time fighting "spam" (unsolicited commercial e-mail). I know a bit about how the spammers operate and what methods have been effective in shutting them down.
There is a bill currently before the House that purports to limit the flow of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) that is currently destroying the functionality of e-mail as a communications tool. This bill is known as the CAN-SPAM Act.
This bill would create a "do not spam me" registry. Businesses that
specialize in sending UCE would be required to purge all addresses from their list that appear in the registry.Essentially, this bill would create a condition where every business would have a legal right to send a private citizen UCE, unless that citizen indicated that they preferred not to receive such solicitations. Given that we have millions of businesses in the United States, consider what would happen if only a small portion of them decided to become active in advertising via UCE. If 1,000,000 businesses sent out just one UCE message per year (not a huge advertising campaign by any stretch), then we would receive an average of over 2,700 UCE messages each day. Most e-mail users consider their address to be non-functional when they receive several hundred UCE messages each day. Note that there are hundreds of millions of businesses world wide.
This approach will give legal cover to businesses and establishes the privacy rights of the individual as being secondary to corporate interests. It is a Constitutionally backward solution. The rights of the individual should be considered before the interests of corporations.
There are several steps that could be taken that would give the public the necessary tools to knock down the UCE problem.
1. Legally establish that a business may not send commercial e-mail without the express permission of the e-mail address owner. The process is known as "confirmed opt-in". It requires the individual to submit an address to business. An automated response is then sent to the individual via e-mail. The individual must then respond to that automated response to verify or "confirm" their desire to be sent commercial e-mail messages. This last message is kept by the advertiser as proof of permission. The advertiser must also provide an immediate method of removal from the list.
No other arrangement is acceptable if the objective is to limit UCE or to protect individual liberty.
1.a. Legally establish that it is illegal to sell or purchase such lists of
information. Such sales essentially are a transmittal of personal
information without the permission of the individual in question.
Additionally, if an individual rescinds permission given to company A, there is no mechanism to ensure that others that have purchased the list are aware that permission has been revoked. Therefore company B won't know that the list they bought from A and sold to C who in turn sold it to D is no longer valid.2. Legally support the many state statutes against UCE by establishing that the victim of UCE can file charges using those state statutes in their locality against digital trespassers regardless of where the offenders live, and regardless of the location from which the UCE was sent. This would get around the current problem where a person living in California cannot take legal action against an individual living in Michigan (such as Alan Ralsky) that sends UCE via computer servers located in China, South Korea, and several South American countries.
The key is to make the most restrictive law be the one that citizens can use against those that send UCE and to ensure the least difficulty for the individual citizen in obtaining an appropriate resolution to the issue.
3. Legally establish that companies providing connectivity cannot write so-called "pink contracts" that permit advertisers to violate the published acceptable use policies in exchange for premium connectivity charges. Almost every company has acceptable use policies against sending UCE or hosting sites that are advertised via UCE. Several companies currently write contracts with those that send UCE or host sites advertised via UCE that permit those advertisers to disregard those published acceptable use policies.
4. Legally _acknowledge_ that computer owners have the right to protect their property by refusing to accept e-mail traffic. Legally establish that people that create lists of IP addresses to be used to help know which traffic to refuse are not legally responsible for any economic "damages" incurred by advertisers. It is the computer owner that does the blocking, not the list generator. Such blocking lists are used (or not used) based on their reputation at stopping UCE while not stopping legitimate e-mail.
The anti-spam community has been hit hard recently by spammers seeking to legally damage such list generators as a means of damaging their ability to publish such lists.
Please do not vote for the CAN-SPAM act as it currently exists. Please be very vocal in your opposition. Please take this concern to Speaker Hastert and Senator Frist. Please correct this bill before it becomes law.
I happen to be a Republican leaning Libertarian. That means I vote for Republicans from time to time, particularly when it means keeping another unqualified candidate out of office. I'd like to see the GOP do well on this issue. The bill as currently written is a pro-business/anti-individual liberty piece of legislation. It WILL give the spammers the legal cover they need to send more spam, not less. This will come back to haunt the GOP if the bill isn't fixed.
I would be more than happy to speak with Congressman Smith or any of his aides about this issue.
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