Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

Issues

Technology

Legislation to Prevent Spam E-mails

16 December 2003

Unsolicited “SPAM” emails are an incredible nuisance for computer users, and many of U.S. Rep. Inslee's constituents have asked the federal government to curtail the use of junk emails that clutter their inboxes with inappropriate and unwanted material. With Inslee's support, Congress recently passed the CAN SPAM Act of 2003 (S.877). This legislation seeks to reduce SPAM emails by:

1. Giving American consumers the right to opt-out of all unwanted and unsolicited commercial e-mail or SPAM;
2. Providing the FTC with the authority to set up a "Do-Not-SPAM" registry based on the "Do-Not-Call" registry for unwanted and unsolicited telemarketing telephone calls;
3. Granting the strongest available protection for parents and consumers to deny pornographic SPAM;
4. Making it a crimeto send fraudulent SPAM, subject to five years in prison, statutory damages of $2 million for violations that may be tripled to $6 million for intentional violations, and unlimited damages for fraud and abuse.

Although no single piece of legislation will ultimately solve the e-mail spam problem, this bill is an important first step toward allowing consumers to retake their inboxes from the flood of unwanted email. The majority of spam e-mails contain solicitations that are false or misleading, contain material of an adult nature, and often contain a false return address that makes it impossible to determine the identity of the sender. These unwanted emails, which constitute one-third of all e-mail traffic, are a financial burden to both the Internet Service Provider and the recipient.