Congresswoman Heather Wilson is arguably the most active soldier in the nascent war on unsolicited commercial bulk email, otherwise known as spam.
"Anyone who has an email account understands: You should have the right to say no," the New Mexico Republican said.
But as Wilson is also the first to admit, she has a long way to go before she stems the plague. Just this past week, the House Judiciary Committee killed key provisions of an anti-spam bill Wilson had co-sponsored, replacing it with a watered-down version she said will do nothing to stop the flood of unwanted email clogging people's inboxes every day.
Scott Hazen-Mueller, founder of the anti-spam advocacy group Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), is equally dissatisfied with the state of laws against unwanted commercial email.
"The parts of the law that made it useful to consumers had already been taken out, and now the little bits left that were useful are gone," Hazen-Mueller said.
As anyone with a Web connection knows, few legal weapons exist to completely eradicate spam. So far courts have protected spam sent by political and religious groups under First Amendment freedoms. As for commercial spam, no federal anti-spam laws exist, and only 22 states have enacted anti-spam laws.
Even those state laws largely govern spam only once it reaches your email box, either requiring spammers to accurately label their emails, provide a valid return address, or offer recipients opt-out provisions.
But Hazen-Mueller insists that any truly effective anti-spam law, whether on the state or federal level, would allow recipients to opt out of unsolicited commercial spam before they ever receive it, in part because, as Wilson says, it is the recipient who pays.
She and Hazen-Mueller cite a recent European Union study estimating that Internet subscribers pay $9.4 billion in spam-related connection costs each year. ISPs must bear the costs associated with unwanted email, and those costs are ultimately absorbed by consumers. An estimated $2 of the typical $20 monthly connection fee pays for spam, they said.
But spam hits your inbox in a more direct way, Hazen-Mueller added. AOL, the world's biggest ISP, says 30 percent of the email its users get is spam. And if even 1 percent of the estimated 27 million US small businesses emailed one spam annually apiece, that would amount to 600 unwanted emails every day, he said.
So far, little that's happened on Capitol Hill gives anti-spam groups such as CAUCE much hope for a tough law. The original version of the Unsolicited Commercial Email Act of 2001 won approval from the House Energy and Commerce Committee before succumbing to what Wilson called a political "turf war" between that panel and the judiciary committees.
What remains of Wilson's bill drops key provisions allowing recipients and Internet service providers to sue spammers who violate the law, Wilson said. Instead, the current bill requires only that spammers provide a legitimate return email address on their mailings.
"This amendment says as long as you are shameless about being a professional pornographer and don't lie about who you are, you have a perfect right to send unsolicited email to anyone," she said.
Whether the provision that remains would prove tough enough remains a matter of debate. Wilson would like to see violators of the bill penalized $500, though so far no one in Congress has been willing to attach any specific fine to existing proposals, she added.
Wilson expects the anti-spam bills to reach the House floor for debate and a vote by late June or early July, though she says spam does not rate as the hottest issue in Washington.
Spam "doesn't compete with education or taxes," she said, "but we would like to move it forward."
Meanwhile, spam is accelerating at a blinding pace. The Direct Marketers Association says businesses spent $2.8 billion on "interactive media marketing" in 2000, though what percentage of that was spam is unclear. Wilson does credit the DMA with devising the e-Mail Preference Service, or e-MPS, for its member businesses, which allows consumers to opt out of spams.
But financial services such as banks, credit card companies, and mortgage loan companies are bombarding consumers with spam, creating the fastest-growing segment of the spam market, Wilson said.
Spam "is a wonderful ad medium for them, because the cost of it is borne by you and me," she said.
