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| Judiciary Committee Strips Wilson Spam Bill of Consumer Rights Provisions |
May 23, 2001 |
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Bill as passed by the Judiciary Committee today would do nothing to slow the flood of junk e-mail invading families’ inboxes
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Heather Wilson vowed to fight for the rights of parents and consumers to say “No thanks; take me off your list,” to junk e-mailers. “You have a right to stop tele-marketers from calling you. There is an outright federal ban on junk faxes. You even have a right to stop junk mail from coming to your regular mailbox. You should have the right to tell a company to stop sending junk e-mail to your in box and the in boxes of your children.”
In a move widely acknowledged as reflecting internal turf battles between committees, the House Judiciary Committee today passed a substitute amendment to Wilson’s Unsolicited Commercial Email Act, HR 718 that only contains provisions that would be within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary bill only addresses fraudulent e-mail. “This amendment says as long as you are shameless about being a professional pornographer and don’t lie about who you are, you have a perfect right to send unsolicited e-mail to anyone, including children.” Wilson said. “That’s wrong, and reasonable people know it is wrong. There is a right of free speech on the Internet; but there is no right to force people to listen.”
According to a recent study released by the European Union`s executive arm, the European Commission, unsolicited commercial e-mail costs Internet subscribers worldwide $9.4 billion in connection costs every year.
The financial services industry, which, by some estimates, is the fastest growing source of junk e-mail on the internet, lobbied hard to protect their right to send junk e-mail to consumers who are not their customers. It is a cheap way to prospect for new credit card customers and people who need home equity at someone else’s expense. It’s the only kind of advertising where a million ads cost as much as one ad. “Spam is like sending junk mail ‘postage due’ and you have no way to stop it,” Wilson said.
“I am confident that meaningful anti-spam legislation will ultimately be passed into law and I look forward to working with all those interested in dealing seriously with this issue. I will work with House leadership and members of the Judiciary Committee to bring a bill that merges the best of the Commerce and Judiciary bills together and bring it to the floor for a vote of the House,” Wilson said.
A nearly identical version of the Commerce Committee bill passed the House of Representatives by a margin of 427 to 1 in the 106th Congress. The Judiciary Committee has until June 5th to complete the report on their version of the bill. From there, both versions of the bill go to the Committee on Rules, which will seek to reconcile the differences before a floor vote is scheduled.
Among the critical provisions of the bill that the Judiciary Committee eliminated were provisions that would:
* Make it illegal to continue sending junk email to someone after they have asked to be removed from a distribution list;
* Allow individuals to sue to block junk e-mail if spammers fail to heed their request to stop;
* Require unsolicited commercial e-mail to be labeled as such;
* Set a $500 per email penalty for continuing to send junk e-mail after someone has asked for it to stop;
* Authorize the Federal Trade Commission to go after junk e-mailers who spam a consumer after a request has been made to stop.
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