Anti-Spamming Bills introduced in Congress

While the FIREWALLS list is onto e-mail spamming, the following might be of inteest...

Two bills with vastly different philosophies have been introduced into Congress to deal with the e-mail spamming issues.

The Senate Bill S.771 authored by Senator Murkowski is rather focused and gives oversight to the Federal Trade Commission (not the Federal Communications Commission). (text available at http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/commercialemail)

The House Bill (unnumber) authored by Represenatative Smith (NJ) would just extent the anti-fax-spamming bill to apply to e-mail. (text available at http://www.cauce.org)

If you have opinions on this subject, you might want to make them known to your senator or representative.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) and others are against legal regulation of this type, and prefer to put together a study group first to develop a best solution.

Apparently, the spammers have irritated enough people that the word has gotten to Washington. One can only hope we come out with a sensible solution.