WASHINGTON-The House Commerce Committee last week approved legislation to curb unsolicited commercial e-mail, possibly clearing the way for lawmakers to consider a related bill championed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) that would ban mobile-phone spam.
The anti-spam bill, now ripe for House floor action, would require marketers to label spam as an advertisement and direct Internet service providers to give consumers the chance to opt out of getting electronic junk mail. Violators would face fines of $500 per offense up to $50,000. Enforcement would be carried out by the Federal Trade Commission.
Last year, the House overwhelmingly passed a comparable version of the bill. Last Tuesday, Senate communications subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a similar bill.
While the bill would allow consumers to sue to block Internet spam, class-action lawsuits against ISPs and marketers would be prohibited.
The financial and insurance industries and marketers wanted the bill changed, fearing it would hurt their ability to advertise products and services to consumers.
“Millions of unsolicited commercial e-mails, which contain advertisements for legitimate products as well as pornography, dubious products, or get-rich-quick schemes, clog up individuals’ computer systems and the entire information superhighway,” said Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), author of the Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail Act of 2001. “The problem with spam is that the receiver pays for e-mail advertisements. Junk e-mail is like `postage due’ marketing or telemarketing calling collect.”
The same is true for spam sent over the airwaves to mobile phones; the wireless consumer pays. Getting spam to appear on mobile-phone screens is not necessarily difficult for marketers and can be accomplished without knowledge or consent of carriers themselves. This happened to AT&T Wireless Services Inc., giving rise to the Holt legislation.
“We were very happy to see the bill passed by committee. We think it bodes well for our bill,” said Pete Yaeger, press secretary for Holt. But it’s unclear whether the Holt bill will fair as well as the Wilson legislation. The mobile-phone industry says the Holt bill is unnecessary and redundant. Indeed, the House Commerce Committee did not act on Holt’s bill last year and has showed no interest in bringing it up this year.
Wilson said a European Union study found that unsolicited commercial e-mails cost Internet subscribers worldwide $9.4 billion in connection costs every year.
