Congress poised for antispam vote | CNET News.com

Well, I guess it's a start. I'm not totally happy with it because it leans towards opting out, as opposed to opting in. I really dislike it when you have to say you don't want to get something. If I want something from you, I'll tell you. It seems that the FTC will be having a Do Not SPAM list, much like the Do Not Call list. Of course, I'll sign up for that.

Some of the measures in the bill make sense (look near the bottom of the article). Not forging headers, can't harvest addresses from the web, needs a valid mailing address in it, can't use open relays, etc...

Of course, this won't stop SPAM. I'm not sure it will even curb SPAM. The FTC is "Federal", not "global"... so it will only apply to spammers in the US. And, you know people will continue to go through open relays and contain forged header info. If you can't find them, you can't fine them. Who will be fined anyways? The spammer, or the person hiring them to do "bulk emailing"? If a US company hires a company in Canada to send the mailings, the Canadian company isn't bound by US regulations.

I'm not sure of the wording of the bill. I'm a little nervous if this is the Feds controlling how people use email (in a sense). I'm hoping the wording is really adding a federal regulation to corporations on how they do marketing, rather than how mass mailers send the emails. Companies should be regulated to not be able to market via email with companies, or themselves, when they use these practices.

I guess it is a step in the right direction, and I'll be interested if it has more of an impact than I think it will.