Bush gives seal of approval to 'flawed' US spam laws

US anti-spam legislation was given a boost when President Bush signed the 'Can-Spam' bill yesterday, creating the first federal law regulating spam, however critics are not convinced of its worth.

While backers say it will be a major step in the war against email solicitations for pornography, generic viagra, diet pills, get-rich-quick schemes and the like, critics scoff that email users will be unlikely to see a decline in the volume of junk in their in-boxes as a result of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, which will kick in on New Year's Day.

Congress overwhelmingly approved the legislation earlier this month, after more than six years of unsuccessful attempts to enact a law to interrupt the flood of commercial email.

With Bush's signature, a complex set of rules will take effect to govern how companies may communicate with customers they already know and with people they don't. Falsified email headers could be punished with prison terms, as could sending "sexually oriented" email that is not properly labelled. The Federal Trade Commission receives new enforcement authority and could choose to set up a "do not email" list akin to the commission's wildly popular National Do Not Call registry.

Web portal and email giant Yahoo! was quick to hail the bill's enactment. "This legislation is a victory for consumers and the internet," Yahoo! said in a statement. "It provides businesses with important new legal weapons in the ongoing battle against spam. And it supplements the current technological, educational and legal tools Yahoo! and others are using to fight this threat," the company said.

But the law has raised alarm among some spam fighters because it would legalise sending non fraudulent spam and explode state laws which currently prevent that practice. At least 34 states have slapped regulations on bulk email, with some jurisdictions going much farther than Washington, D.C. Washington state has granted email recipients the right to sue spammers, and California and Delaware have mandated an "opt-in" approach that prohibits unsolicited commercial email without a prior business relationship.

Unlike the California and Delaware laws, Can-Spam sets an "opt-out" standard, and it denies individuals the right to sue spammers. California Senator Debra Bowen, a Democrat who supported her state's legislation, said in a statement on 8 December that Can-Spam "doesn't can spam, it gives it the congressional seal of approval...An advertiser's First Amendment right to free speech doesn't trump a person's basic right to be left alone. Spam isn't legitimate advertising and it's not free speech."

Bush's signature comes as the flow of solicitations from bogus confidants of deposed Nigerian dictators has reached an all-time high, bedeviling corporate America and driving individual PC users to distraction. E-mail security company MessageLabs said last week that spam increased dramatically in 2003, with a 77 per cent increase over last year. In May, spam accounted for more than 50 percent of all business e-mail traffic, and it now represents about two-thirds, MessageLabs said.

Declan McCullagh writes for News.com