by Leigh Goessl

Created on: September 01, 2007   Last Updated: July 06, 2009

Spam is frustrating no doubt about it. Mass spamming has grown to be a large enough problem to take note of due to the fact it has a largely negative economic impact on productivity. Because of its severe effects, the U.S. government has taken the matter of spam seriously and has been actively working to find ways to circumvent the issue of spam and come up with a solution.

As a response to the SPAM problem, in 2003 the U.S. Congress passed a law affectionately known as the CAN-SPAM Act. This stands for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003".

Acts that are illegal under this law include:

*Fraudulent or misleading email titles, subjects or addresses
*An email cannot be sent that contains sexually oriented material without informing the recipient in the subject line
*A working "unsubscribe" option must be offered for at least 30 days past the date an e-mail is sent
*E-mail cannot be sent to addresses that has been harvested from websites, forums or generated randomly
*Registering for email addresses under a false identity
*Must remove request for removal within a reasonable amount of time upon receiving request

Under the CAN-SPAM law individual recipients cannot bring lawsuits against the spammer, but the FCC, the Attorney General (State) and Internet Service Providers (ISP) are eligible to bring litigation. However, there are limitations as to what compensation can be pursued.The caps for monetary penalty are set differently; the Attorney General can sue up to $2 million dollars at $250 per message, and an ISP can sue for $100 per offense, capping off at $1 million. Spammers can also receive three to five years of jail time under the CAN-SPAM law (Mark Ciampa, 2003).

While the government probably had good intentions in trying to control spam, what it seems to be doing is forcing legitimate companies to spend a lot more time and resources on privacy policies and being cautious on sending out legitimate emails. Unfortunately this also impacts productivity because this time invested to comply takes away from their core business competencies.

The CAN-SPAM doesn't appear to affect the spammers at all. The amount of spam generated annually continues to increase and cause congestion for organizations and the general public. As a result, security issues continue to grow.

Weighing the benefits and negatives, the question begs to be asked if the law has really done much good. There is also the fact that spammers are quite savvy at hiding their true identities. Is it really feasible to spend so much time and money on laws? One might be inclined to say no because, frankly, any passed laws can't necessarily be enforced in a borderless environment.

Not every country will be on board with enforcing U.S. laws, and unless the globe is willing to become uniform in laws, this can't effectively work. While the movement to control spam is an admirable intent by the U.S., in the long term, it is a futile one.

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