On October 22, the Senate approved, 97-0, a bill (S. 877) that would make it a federal crime to send fraudulent or deceptive e-mail “spam.”
Sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), the CAN-SPAM Act would prohibit the use of false or deceptive headers on e-mail messages, which “spammers” often use to disguise their identities. All advertisements would have to display legitimate return addresses and the abbreviation “ADV” so that recipients could file them away.
S. 877 would ban “dictionary attacks,” which use automated software to generate millions of permutations of e-mail addresses in hopes of finding a valid address. It also would ban the practice of “harvesting” e-mail addresses from other Web sites.
Under the measure, violators could be subject to fines of $10 per e-mail and up to $1.5 million for willful violations.
S. 877 also would incorporate certain criminal penalty provisions included in a bill (S. 1293) approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in September (see The Source, 9/26/03). Under the Criminal Spam Act, those spammers who send out more than 2,500 messages in any 24-hour period would be subject to three years in prison. Violators could be imprisoned for up to five years if the spam advertises a fraudulent scheme or child pornography, or leads to identify theft.
During consideration of the bill, the Senate adopted, by voice vote, an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that would require senders of sexually-explicit commercial e-mail to place a notice in the subject header of each message and add an opening page to all copies of their e-mail being sent to unknown recipients.
The Senate also adopted, by voice vote, an amendment by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) that would authorize the FTC to create a “do-not-e-mail” list similar to the “do-not-call” registry that was recently established to evade telemarketers.
