Can Spam--a good first act
By Enrique Salem
Special to ZDNet


COMMENTARY--The U.S. Congress has given final approval to S.877, the so-called Can-Spam Act, which promises to crack down on unsolicited commercial e-mail by imposing stiff civil penalties and even prison sentences to people convicted of spamming.

The Can-Spam Act would also allow the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the creation of a do not spam registry, similar to the recently created do not call list.

There's little doubt that spam is a serious nuisance, but there is insufficient appreciation for how serious a threat it is to our economy. Spam now constitutes more than half (56 percent) of all Internet e-mail traffic, according to the data collected from the 300 million recipients my company, Brightmail, protects.

The staggering volume of spam threatens the viability of e-mail as a communications tool--for business and individuals. And as spammers venture outside of e-mail, they threaten to inhibit the adoption of new communications technologies, such as wireless SMS (short messaging service) or instant messaging.

But it's not just volume we need to be concerned about; spam is becoming increasingly fraudulent and offensive. My own company has found that adult content spam has increased 170 percent in the last 12 months while scams have nearly doubled in the same period.

Spam has grown from being a world-class annoyance to a darkening threat, so it is no wonder that the Can-Spam, or the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, has received such widespread support from members of Congress and interest groups that run the gamut of the political spectrum, from the Christian Coalition to New York Sen. Charles Schumer.

Critics of the bill say it will be challenging to enforce and the evidence supports that claim. Brightmail has found that the vast majority of spam is untraceable, and that spammers are employing increasingly sophisticated means of covering their tracks, including extreme randomization, origin concealment, filtering evasion and the use of open proxies. It's also true that legislation adopted in 29 states, Japan and the European Union has done little to slow the spread of spam.

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