"I'll be very surprised if we didn't pass a comprehensive antispam bill in this Congress," Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat-New York, said at a conference organised by the Federal Trade Commission.
The three-day conference comes as officials in Washington are becoming acutely interested in stemming the flood of spam, which is snarling networks and driving Internet service providers to distraction.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Democrat-California, said on Monday that she also would introduce legislation giving the FTC the power to require that unsolicited commercial e-mail be tagged with "ADV" in the subject line.
Spam opponents have long sought national legislation to rein in unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail, but efforts have been slow to bear fruit amid free-speech concerns and opposition from marketing groups. As a result, states have taken the lead in crafting antispam measures so far, with Virginia this week enacting tough new criminal penalties for spammers who engage in fraud.
Spam experts note that even a federal law would likely do little to stem spam originating overseas, which accounts for up to 50 percent of all junk e-mail by some estimates. News.Commentary What e-mail marketers need to do Some business messages deserve to get through. Forrester offers guidelines to avoid spam's taint. Schumer said he plans to introduce a bill in the next few weeks that would create a national "do not e-mail" registry and punish repeat offenders with "tough criminal penalties." Schumer told the crowd that his 14-year-old daughter was inundated with spam promoting pornographic Web sites and that he was "utterly amazed" to learn that no federal criminal laws existed to punish the practice. He said his legislation is still being drafted but likely would have three levels of penalties: A warning, then $5,000-a-day fines and finally jail time of up to two years for repeat offenders.
