The CAN-SPAM Act, also known as the Controlling the Assault of
Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, came into effect in
January 2004.
Despite its name the CAN-SPAM Act fails to actually "can" spam.
There is no ban on sending unsolicited commercial e-mail or text
messages. Instead, it requires that spam sent to consumers includes
a means of opting-out of the mailing list used by the sender.
The Act also provides for a national Do-Not-Spam list, bans the
sending of fraudulent e-mails or unmarked sexually oriented
e-mails, and provides for civil and criminal sanctions for those
spammers who breach the rules. The penalties may amount to fines of
$6 million and five years in prison in the most severe cases.
Critics have accused the Act of being narrow and weak,
accusations that may be hard to deny given that the US sends more
spam than any other, according to a recent report by anti-virus
firm Sophos.
Its April 2005 report claimed that the US was responsible for an
average of 35.7% of all spam caught in its filters between January
and March this year – albeit down on last August's figure from
Sophos, which suggested that the US was responsible for over 42% of
the world's spam.
The FTC is in the process of making amendments to its rules for
enforcing the Act and seeks comments on its proposals by 27th
June.
These include clarifying the definitions of the terms "person"
and "sender" – to help in cases where multiple parties are
advertising in a single e-mail message – and "valid physical postal
addresses".
It is also proposing to shorten from 10 days to three the time a
sender may take before honouring a recipient's opt-out request; and
to ensure that when submitting a valid opt-out request, a recipient
cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his
or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps
other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single web
page.
