Office.com: Spam Bill Could Impose Hefty Fines on Violators

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Welcome to the Computers and Internet vertical, which features the best of our daily content. For more specialized news feeds, use the pulldown menu at top of page to reach our 13 sub-industries. Got suggestions, story ideas? E-mail producer David Hancock.

The most frequently mentioned companies from our Computers and Internet journal collection during the past 14 days.

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Sept. 27, 2000 — Corporations and ISPs spend tens of millions of dollars a year trying to keep their networks clear of unsolicited e-mail, or spam. AOL estimates that up to 30 percent of e-mail to its customers is spam, resulting in 24 million unsolicited messages a day.

The problem has created such a public uproar that Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., sponsored a bill that would allow consumers and ISPs to sue spammers for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail: the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2000.

Under Wilson's bill, each consumer could sue a spammer for as much as $50,000, while ISPs could sue violators $1 per e-mail and up to $50,000 per day. The bill would also require accurate return addresses on unsolicited commercial e-mail, and it authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to go after junk e-mailers who violate this law.

"This bill will allow parents and consumers the power to say 'enough is enough' and close their inbox to annoying and obscene junk e-mail," says Wilson.

Wilson herself has been a victim of Internet spam, having once received an unsolicited e-mail titled "Here's what your federal government wanted you to know." When she opened the document, it was pornographic material. This incident inspired her to sponsor the bill.

"As consumers, we should have the power to stop getting junk e-mail on our computers or on the computers of our children," Wilson says. "It causes the receiver to pays for e-mail advertisements. Junk e-mail is like 'postage-due' marketing or telemarketers calling collect. Spam costs consumers and ISPs $1 billion a year."

Next page: Why the ACLU opposes it

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