House passes anti-spam bill

Will this really work?

Measure would outlaw most unsolicited e-mail; Senate approval is expected.

The House voted overwhelmingly Saturday for a bill to outlaw most Internet spam and create a "do not spam" registry for those who do not wish to receive unsolicited junk e-mail.

Online marketers who flood e-mail in boxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes would face multimillion dollar fines and jail time under the measure. It passed by a vote of 392-5 at dawn Saturday, following an all-night session of the House that was largely devoted to a separate Medicare bill.

The Senate unanimously passed a similar anti-spam bill last month, but it must assent to the House changes before the measure can become law. The Senate is expected to do so in the coming days.

Anti-spam bills have died in Congress for six years while unsolicited commercial e-mail has grown from a nuisance to a plague that threatens to derail the Internet's most popular means of communication.

....

It would outlaw spammers' attempts to cover their tracks by requiring marketers to identify themselves clearly and avoid misleading subject lines or return addresses. Pornographic messages would have to be clearly labeled as such to allow users to more easily filter them out.

Violators would face millions of dollars in fines and up to five years in jail. The bill would not allow individuals to sue spammers.

Source: CNN Money

Would you put your email address on a "Do Not SPAM" List? Or is this just creating a huge SPAM list for the FTC to exploit later in our lives? Vote now!

The subject line thing is what really annoys the hell out of me. But how are they going to enforce this? And why protect spammers so we cannot sue them?

I just do not understand how this would get enforced. If I get a SPAM email am I supposed to send it to the FTC? Its not hard at all to spoof an email, how many spammers employ tactics to spoof their IP, etc?

Any ideas?

Article Author: Ken Edwards

Ken Edwards is the Gaming Editor at Blogcritics, and calls Breaking Windows home. Ken works part time for Student Publications at BGSU as the Webmaster and System Administrator. He is also a freelance web developer.

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