Focus On:
Getting Rid of Spam on the Net
A "spam ban" is making the rounds through Congress. Rep. Christopher Smith
(R-NJ) has introduced the Netizens Protection Act of 1997, designed to ban unsolicited
commercial e-mail to electronic mailboxes.
The spam ban would include all unsolicited commercial e-mail including get-rich-quick
schemes, electronic dating services, offers of unproven medical remedies and other
solicitations that ultimately cost consumers in online charges — unlike regular junk
mail, officials said.
The bill, Smith said, "will help people not only with the nuisance of spam but the
costs as well."
Smith added that anyone who wanted to continue to receive spam mail could do so under
the Netizens Protection Act.
Along with Smith’s bill, the Internet Service Providers’ Consortium (ISP/C),
an international trade association of Internet service providers, issued its policy
position regarding junk e-mail.
"Unwanted junk mail is an area of true consumer aggravation, and we believe
it’s also a detriment to our members’ businesses which must be aired to the
public," said Deb Howard, ISP/C president.
"We feel our position will benefit both consumer and provider through advocacy of
an ‘opt-in’ policy which will ensure users receive only e-mail which they
specifically request," she said.
The ISP/C position highlights the cost which receiving providers and their end users
now pay for unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). It also emphasizes the need for any
evolving plan or regulation regarding UCE to address the cost-shifting issue.
"Neither providers nor end users should be expected to subsidize a marketer’s
advertising costs by having to pay the price of ‘postage-due’ advertising
e-mail," commented Tim Brown, chairman and founder of the ISP/C board.
The ISP/C position document is available on the ISP/C site at http://www.ispc.org/policy/spam.html on
the World Wide Web.
(Contact: Ken Wolfe, Office of Rep. Christopher Smith, 202-225-3765)
The Internet began as a communication resource for scientific research - but
today’s Internet is slowing down with chats, buying and selling, commercial e-mail
and an ever-expanding list of World Wide Web sites. A combined group of private and public
California universities have received $3.8 million from the National Science Foundation to
begin an "Internet II" project.
Seven University of California campuses including Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Riverside,
San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz joined with Stanford University, CalTech and
the University of Southern California to apply for the grant. The reward is a system which
eventually, according to the group, will allow students to connect at speeds up to 600
million bits per second or enough speed to transmit the entire 30-volume edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica in less than one second.
Internet II is a popular term coined by the Internet community. Officially, the
universities, formed into the Consortium for Education Network Initiatives in California
(CENIC), will participate in the design and development of CalREN-2. The National Science
Foundation is also building a research network called Internet2 and CalREN-2 will link to
the larger network along with the current Internet.
Terry Lightfoot, a spokesperson for the Office of the President of the University of
California, said, "The Internet has evolved or devolved, depending on your outlook,
from a resource for sharing scientific data to a place to chat, sell goods, advertise, and
support hundreds of thousands of World Wide Web sites. This new system will allow students
and researchers a separate network for doing what the Internet used to do."
Lightfoot said the growth of the Internet had meant a slower access and often denied
access due to traffic for many researchers. CalREN-2 is designed solve the problems of
congestion and reliability.
On the commercial side, Pacific Bell, Cisco Systems and Fore Systems will provide
technical support and hardware for CalREN-2. The information gathered in creation of
CalREN-2 is expected to add new technologies to the Internet eventually.
(Contact: Terry Lightfoot, University of California, 510-987-9194)
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail is a group of Internet users
established to fight unsolicited e-mail, more commonly known as spam. At the Web site you
can read more about them and the solutions they propose. There’s also an e-mail list
which is used to distribute announcements from the group. If you’re interested, check
the Web or sign-up for the mailing list by sending the message below to the address below.
E-mail: cauce-announce-request@lists.cauce.org
Message Body: subscribe
World Wide Web: http://www.cauce.org
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