Senators Tackle Spam Again
Dateline 04/05/99
Senators Frank Murkowski and Robert Torricelli have introduced another bill that aims at cutting spam. Find out about the proposed legislation.
"Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation!
Title and profit I resign;
The pot of honour shall be mine."
John Gay
The Vulture, the Sparrow, and other Birds
Inbox Privacy Act of 1999
After an unsuccessful attempt last year, Sens. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey) have introduced another bill trying to control unsolicited bulk email.
This is a positive sign that maybe, eventually, anti-spam legislation may come into effect. The Senators also did listen to what anti-spam activists said and modified last year's bill.
Contact Information Required
Like most proposed legislation of bulk email, the Inbox Privacy Act of 1999 requires full and correct contact information in all unsolicited messages. This includes name, email as well as physical address and a telephone number.
Using this contact information, anybody can request to be taken off a spammer's list. Such a request has to be respected. So far the bill follows the path of an opt-out scheme, a doubtful path that may not lead anywhere.
Domain-Wide Opt-Out
Here, the Inbox Privacy Act of 1999 introduces an interesting twist, however: owners of a domain name (such as private persons, companies, but also - most interestingly - ISPs) can elect not to receive any unsolicited commercial email at their domain.
This may work fine with companies and private domain name owners, but it gets a bit complicated (read: expensive) with Internet Service Providers: they may (and most probably will: processing spam consumes resources and thus money) opt out on behalf of all their users. Unfortunately, this raises conflicts with the right of free speech.
Thus every single user must be able to opt in to receive commercial bulk email. For some strange reason she does not do so with the email marketing firms but with the ISP who would have to maintain a list of users that opted in. Thus the burden of maintaining the lists is placed upon the Internet Service Providers instead of the email marketing business.
The whole process could be made much simpler, more effective and all-around better for everyone if it was switched to a general opt-in scheme. Maybe I'm blind, but I do not see any substantial problems with opt-in and First Amendment rights. It is still possible (and necessary) to decide in every case which right is more important: the right of privacy (and property) or the right of free speech. This will depend on the situation, the content, and the circumstances.
