Saturday, 11/22/03 - ISIPP has learned today that the United States House of Representatives
has debated, voted on, and passed a revised version of the Burns-Wyden
CAN SPAM anti-spam bill which was passed by the Senate earlier this month, and that the Senate has voted on and also
passed this revised version. President Bush has agreed in principle to
sign this legislation.
The new law, while not as limiting as some of the state anti-spam laws which it will
now pre-empt, most notably California's new law, does contain several
prohibitions which if adequately enforced could spell trouble for
problem spammers. Most notably, the new Federal law will:
1. Provide that those who advertise in spam are just as legally liable
as the ones who actually send the spam. The advertisers are often much
easier to find, and to prosecute, than the senders who hide in the
shadows.
2. Make illegal using open proxies or relays or any other form of
resource misappropriation.
3. Make illegal any commercial message sent with false header
information.
4. Require a working manner to unsubscribe which must continue to
work for at least thirty (30) days after the mail is initiated.
5. Make illegal a sender trying to get around an unsubscribe request by simply
subscribing the recipient to another list.
6. Make illegal the providing of goods or services to those who spam in
violation of the law where
the provider of the goods or services has a 50% or greater interest in the spamming
vendor, or has knowledge of the spam and receives or expects to
receive an economic benefit from the spam.
7. Generally pre-empt state anti-spam laws, but vests in state agencies and state attorney generals the ability to
sue spammers, in Federal court, on behalf of the state's citizens who
have been spammed.
8. Provide for attorneys fees to the state agency in any state-
initiated action.
9. Provide that Internet access service providers may sue, on their own behalf, in Federal court.
10. Provide that the law does not impact an ISP's
ability to determine and enforce its own policies for transmission of
email.
