House weakens spam legislation

IDG News Service - A U.S. House of Representatives committee has stripped key elements from a bill designed to curb unsolicited e-mail, or spam, and give consumers rights to take action against parties sending bulk e-mail.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee dropped provisions of the bill that would allow consumers to sue companies that fail to take them off lists for bulk e-mailings. However, committee members added to the bill provisions that would require companies advertising pornography to clearly label e-mail that contains explicit adult content and that would let Internet service providers sue unrelenting spammers that have caused provable damages.

Bill co-sponsor Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) on Wednesday expressed disappointment in the changes to the bill, known as the The Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001. Also sponsoring the bill is Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas).

Wilson suggested that the bill approved by the Judiciary Committee would do little to protect families from the flood of spam landing in their e-mail in-boxes.

Based on the Judiciary Committee's changes, the bill now is more like a bill introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). Goodlatte's bill requires only that spammers provide a legitimate return e-mail address on their bulk mailings.

Kevin McDermott, a spokesman for Wilson, said the Judiciary Committee cut all of the consumer protection provisions and left the fraud provisions requiring spammers to provide legitimate e-mail return addresses and routing information. Wilson will continue to push for passage of the version of the bill already approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee in March, he said.

That version allows consumers to remove themselves from bulk e-mailing lists. If they aren't dropped from the lists, the bulk e-mail companies would be subject to investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and lawsuits from Internet service providers for $500 per spam message, up to a maximum liability of $50,000 per case.

The bill now moves on to the House Rules Committee, which will determine which version of Wilson and Green's bill moves to the full House. The Rules Committee is likely to take up the measure in early to mid-June, McDermott said.

Similar antispam legislation was easily approved by the full House last year but failed to get through the Senate.

Related stories:

• Senators show no taste for spam, April 27, 2001



• Study outlines the cost of internal spam, April 18, 2001



• Congress considers legislation to limit spam, March 27, 2001