Empty Words On Spam

The vote was 97-0 for a bill in the Senate outlawing spam. Senate Votes to Crack Down on Some Spam [nytimes.com]. But the rules in the Can Spam Act are empty and the proposed creation of a "Do Not Email" list meaningless. "If such a list were established, I'd advise customers not to waste their time and effort," Tim Muris, chairman of the FTC said in August. "Most spam is already so clearly illegitimate that the senders are no more likely to comply with new regulations than with the laws they now ignore."

The issue with spam isn't whether it's illegal -- lots of spammers have been sued on a variety of legal grounds -- it's that they use technology to cloak their identities and move from server to server, and place to place, at the drop of a hat. The Bush Administration is spending $100 million on a witness protection program in Iraq. If we devoted the same resources to hunting down and prosecuting spammers, maybe the government could make a dent in the ever-increasing volume of unsolicited commercial email. Otherwise, it is indeed a waste of time trying to make spammers obey new rules when they don't care about rules in the first place!

 Posted by glenn