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The
Can Spam Act (Controlling Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography
and Marketing Act) of 2003 was a first step in controlling
spam. Although the law was greeted with mixed and unexpected
reactions, there are many basic steps taken in the right
direction.
The
law provides basic protection against dangerous spam,
although many believe it gives spammers who are merely
annoying a slap on the wrist. However, many believe that
some protection against serious spammers is better than
no protection, and applaud the advantages while seeking
improvement and greater stringency in the future.
The
advantages of the law is that it provides blanket protection
against most kinds of spam while concentrating on the
most illicit and dangerous practices. It is forbidden
to give a misleading heading or subject line to encourage
someone to open spam.
This
is especially true in the case of pornography, which is
often labeled as something innocuous and many people are
not worried about having their children open a message
with a neutral subject line. Spammers are required to
offer a space on the e-mail that allows the recipient
to demand that no more e-mail come to his or her address.
The sender must stop sending messages to that particular
address within ten business days.
Dangerous
practices carry strict penalties under the Can Spam Act.
Harvesting the web for personal information about someone
is strictly prohibited, as well as spoofing another's
e-mail address and turning a PC into a computer zombie.
Many
of these practices can earn one a large fine or jail time.
Therefore, the Can Spam Act has stiff penalties for those
who engage in criminal activities with spamming, but many
advertisers who don't mind bombarding the public with
e-mails are allowed to do their marketing with a few minor
restrictions.
Many
people wonder how the Federal Trade Commission and the
Department of Justice can really manage to regulate the
kind of spam that appears on the internet. Even a few
years after the Can Spam Act began to take effect, there
are still many spam e-mails that appear constantly which
break the law.
The
truth is that it is still quite difficult to regulate
the net. A person who is being phished, for example, may
report the incident the first few times. But as the e-mails
appear constantly, the recipient will get tired of constantly
reporting phishing and spam and cease from reporting at
all. It is clear that, despite best intentions and the
Can Spam Act, spammers are waging a war of attrition that
can only be won by the anti-spammer by investing in Spam
blockers or whitelists.
The
truth is that the Can Spam Act might not affect the average
e-mail recipient that much, except insofar as that many
potential spammers might be more afraid of getting caught.
This will lead to more clever subterfuges, however, that
will allow spammers to continue to escape detection or
punishment.
However,
the Can Spam Act is, at least, a noble attempt at trying
to regulate annoying and dangerous spam, and it is the
fervent wish of many that the internet will be more effectively
regulated in the future.
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