"Sexually explicit materials and publications for sale in stores
are required by law to be covered from view with a brown paper
wrapper, and it's important that consumers are protected on-line in
the same way," said Nancy Anderson, vice president and deputy
general counsel at Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to ensuring
that internet users are safe on-line and protected from receiving
inappropriate content in e-mail that is unsolicited, unwanted and
illegal."
As part of its ongoing campaign against spammers, the company
therefore made use of rules brought in by the Federal Trade
Commission in May this year that require the warning
"SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" to be included both in the subject line of any
e-mail message that contains sexually oriented material, and in the
electronic equivalent of a "brown paper wrapper" in the body of the
message.
The FTC was obliged to create the identifier under the
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing
Act, or CAN-SPAM Act, as it is known, which was passed in 2003.
The CAN-SPAM Act outlaws fraudulent e-mail and requires
marketers to include an unsubscribe option; but it does not address
other unsolicited commercial e-mail.
The seven lawsuits were filed on Wednesday against "John Doe"
defendants who have yet to be identified. They allege violations of
the CAN-SPAM Act and Washington State's Commercial Electronic Mail
Act, including the use of compromised computers around the world to
route spam e-mail messages, using misleading subject lines, and
failing to include an unsubscribe option and physical address.
Collectively, says Microsoft, the spammers in these cases sent
hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages to internet users.
