Can-Spam anti-spam law remains useless after first year on the books

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Relemail can play an important role in restoring credibility to the medium of email. Can-Spam, in contrast, has really only legalized spamming. You see, Can-Spam doesn't outlaw spam at all: it technically makes it 100% legal! As I've said all along, this isn't a problem that can be solved by legislation alone. It's going to take technical solutions combined with certification processes like Relemail to really make a lasting difference.

• The nation's first law aimed at curtailing junk e-mail earned a mixed report card after a year on the books as few spammers faced legal action and recent surveys showed that spam makes up an even larger proportion of online messages.
• Signed into law Dec. 16, 2003, the Can-Spam Act made it illegal to falsify the "from" and "subject" lines of e-mail solicitations.
• The law doesn't allow individual e-mail users to sue spammers -- an omission decried by anti-spam activists -- but it did open the door for state attorneys general and ISPs to mount a legal offensive.
• The nation's big four e-mail providers -- America Online, Microsoft, Yahoo and Earthlink -- were among the most ardent supporters of the law, and wasted no time using the new provisions.
• On the criminal front, a Virginia jury in November recommended a nine year jail term for a North Carolina man who became the first ever person convicted for felony spamming.
• Still, through all the courtroom activity and the media attention it generated, spam levels rose in 2004, by almost all accounts.
• At the beginning of 2003, spam accounted for about 50 percent of all e-mail, according to Postini, a Redwood City, Calif.-based anti-spam firm that scans about 400 million e-mail messages a day for its clients.
• "They clearly don't think they'll be caught."
• But Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research Inc., a Black Diamond, Wash.-based research firm that specializes in the e-mail and instant-messaging industry, said the failure really isn't the fault of lawmakers.
• The underlying technology of e-mail makes it extremely easy for spammers to hide their identities by using dozens of tricks, including sending messages from the computers of innocent Internet users who've had their computers compromised by viruses.