Can spam be stopped?

Grant Gross, IDG News Service   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Networking and Internet Stories  

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May 1, 2003 (IDG News Service) -- WASHINGTON -- Is there any way to stop the ever-increasing flood of spam? A group of e-mail experts variously suggested better technology, an overhaul of the way the Internet works and new laws -- but they couldn't agree on which approach would work best.
The panelists at an ongoing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) spam conference here couldn't even agree on the definition of spam, with some antispam advocates saying spam is all unsolicited bulk e-mail and some e-mail marketers arguing that spam should be defined more narrowly as unsolicited commercial e-mail that includes false subject lines or misleading e-mail headers.
"There wouldn't be any solicited commercial e-mail if there wasn't some way to approach these people," protested Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association, when other panelists suggested that spam was any unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Wientzen's comment prompted an outbreak of murmurings from other panelists and audience members, but Laura Atkins, president of the antispam SpamCon Foundation, acknowledged that banning all unsolicited bulk e-mail may not be in line with the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment right to free speech. " 'Unsolicited and bulk' may not be the best definition for a law," she said.
The FTC spam hearing comes after a flurry of activity surrounding spam. Organizations and companies have announced spam research efforts, at least two bills aimed at curbing the amount of spam have been introduced in Congress, and others are planned. And a measure just signed into law in Virginia makes some spam activities a felony (see story). Estimates at the FTC hearing of the percentage of all e-mail traffic that is spam ranged from 40% to 75%, and the FTC released a study Tuesday saying two-thirds of all spam contains false information.
Clifton Royston, a systems architect at LavaNet Inc., said the small Hawaiian Internet service provider with about 12,000 customers paid close to $200,000 last year to fight spam. "That's reflected in everyone's Internet bill," Royston said. "A large part of what you're paying for Internet service is because of spam."
On Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he planned to introduce a series of antispam bills, including a federal no-spam registry modeled after do-not-call telemarketing registries, criminal and civil penalties for spammers who don't comply and new antifraud measures (see story). Schumer's legislation, like a bill offered by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, would require commercial e-mail to be labeled as advertising, and he rejected criticisms that a no-spam registry would hamper free speech, saying that commercial speech isn't as protected as political speech under the First Amendment.
"I am saying today that enough is enough," Schumer told the spam conference audience. "It's

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