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ask.heather@mail.house.gov
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In Washington DC
442 Cannon House
Office Building
Washington, DC
20515
202-225-6316 Phone
202-225-4975 Fax |
In Albuquerque
20 First Plaza NW
Suite 603
Albuquerque, NM
87102
505-346-6781 Phone
505-346-6723 Fax |  |
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Congresswoman Heather Wilson, First Congressional District of New Mexico
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| Wilson’s Spam Act Passes Overwhelmingly |
March 23, 2000 |
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Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Heather Wilson’s Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act, H.R. 3113, was passed overwhelmingly by the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection.
“The Internet is a great tool for communication and commerce,” Wilson said. “It’s changing our lives -- largely for the better. But as consumers, we should have the power to stop getting commercial e-mail on our computers or on the computers of our children. The bill also provides relief for Internet Service Providers (ISP) who now bear the cost of unwanted spam as advertising costs are shifted from the advertiser to the service provider. I look forward to working with Congressman Miller and Congressman Green to ensure that this important piece of legislation is enacted into law.”
The final legislation combined Congresswoman Wilson’s provisions to protect individual Internet customers with provisions advocated by Congressman Gene Green (D-Houston) that would prohibit the use of false email addresses and false routing information.
“E-mail can be a useful advertising tool for on-line stores if used properly and with the consumer’s consent," Green stated. “However, Internet users should be given the opportunity to move out of the fast lane of the information superhighway to better control the bulk e-mails streaming across their computers. There are spammers who frequently falsify identifying e-mail information to facilitate their illegal activities. Internet users are having to spend both time and money to sort out and delete unsolicited messages. This legislation weeds out fraudulent spam and eliminates hassles for Internet users. By combining our efforts, we can ensure that consumers are able to benefit from the Internet without any financial or technical burden.”
Unsolicited commercial e-mail, also known as spam, has become a critical consumer protection issue. America OnLine estimates that 30% their e-mail traffic is spam. Millions of unsolicited commercial e-mails, which contain advertisements for pornography, dubious products, or get-rich-quick schemes, clog up individuals’ computer systems and the entire information superhighway. The problem with spam is that the receiver pays for e-mail advertisements. Junk e-mail is like “postage due” marketing or telemarketers calling collect. Spam costs consumers and ISPs money and time.
Specifically, the bill would:
* Require accurate return addresses on unsolicited commercial email;
* Make it illegal to continue spamming someone after they have requested to be removed from a distribution list;
* Make it illegal to harvest e-mail addresses from Internet registrars;
* Require spam to be identified as spam;
* Require ISPs to protect their customers from spam if the ISP profits from allowing spam into their system;
* Allow individuals to sue spammers;
* Allow ISPs to have a spam policy and sue spammers for $500 per message if they violate the policy; and
* Authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to go after spammers who violate this law.
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