Senate Approves Anti-Spam Bill

from the good-or-bad? dept

As was rumored earlier today, the Senate gathered enough folks together this evening to push through an anti-spam bill, that (they say) takes the best of the six hundred or so anti-spam bills that have been introduced this year. The bill includes plans for an absolutely useless "do not spam" list, though, it hands off most of the details to the FTC who has already said that such a list would be useless. This law also, as was discussed earlier today, would overrule state anti-spam laws, such as the one scheduled to go into effect here in California. It bans falsifying return addresses while requiring a physical address (why?) be included in each email. Penalties for breaking the spam law include five years in jail, which seems a bit extreme. The bill is opt-out, meaning that marketers can keep spamming you and you'd have to opt-out each time (unless the "do not spam" list actually works). So, basically, this law won't do anything to actually stop spam, but will probably be a nuisance for people doing legitimate things with email. Of course, the House is still trying to figure out what do on their side of Congress, so there's still a chance this bill will change or not go anywhere.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    dorpus, 23 Oct 2003 @ 12:21am

    Partial Birth Spam Ban

    Is there a way to require spam be sent back to spammers, like pushing a baby back into the womb because you're not allowed to take it out?

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.