From the E-mail frontline...

Senators Slam Spam, Subcommittee Seeks Solutions

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) ripped into junk e-mail, also known as spam, earlier this month. He called the act of spamming "a threat to computer networks across the nation."

"Spamming is truly the scourge of the Information Age," Burns, chairman of the communications subcommittee of the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said at a recent hearing called to "explore legislation to deal with the problem."

"The Internet has provided tremendous commercial and educational opportunities to people across the globe," Burns said. "Unfortunately, however, the revolution on communications technology has also allowed for unscrupulous actors to intrude on the privacy of Americans with the digital equivalent of junk mail."

Spamming is "especially troublesome" to consumers in rural areas, such as Burns’ home state of Montana. Burns’ constituents and other rural residents "must pay long distance charges to receive these unwanted solicitations, many of which contain fraudulent messages," he said.

Earlier this year, Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) included a spam provision in S. 1618, the Telephone Anti-Slamming Act, which passed the Senate last month on a 99-0 vote.

"Our measure would weed out the bad actors of the Internet by requiring identification of online marketers, as well as requiring that `remove’ requests are honored," Murkowski said.

Responding to calls for an outright ban on junk e-mail however, Murkowski said that "such a ban would establish a dangerous precedent and would erode the protections of the First Amendment."

"The government simply should not dictate what a consumer sees in his or her mailbox. We have been down this road before with the Communications Decency Act," Murkowski said.

"The Supreme Court, by a unanimous vote, has made very clear what it thinks of such sweeping bans of Internet material. Consumers should have the final word in deciding what comes into their mailboxes, not the government."

Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), agreed with Murkowski’s stance against an outright junk e-mail ban. "Electronic commerce, of which e-mail is a part, is new," Cerasale told the hearing. "The government, no matter how good its intentions, should not strangle electronic commerce at birth."

Cerasale said the DMA envisions a two-pronged "opt-out" program, where the recipient of an unsolicited bulk e-mail should be able to request that the marketer not send any more e-mails simply by hitting the reply key.

The second prong of DMA’s approach, he said, is to create an "e-mail preference service" which would allow consumers to add their e-mail addresses, online, to a "do not send" list at no charge. Marketers then would use this list to delete the addresses from their e-mail file.

"Prohibition of e-mail will not allow the growth" of the Internet, Cerasale said. "The DMA believes the government should enhance its efforts to combat fraud on the Internet and, specifically, in e-mail."

(Contact: Matt Burns, Office of Sen. Conrad Burns, 202-224-8150)