Defining spam
Despite the charges, MonsterHut says it's a legitimate company with a lawful contract. To send its commercial email, the company gets names and email addresses from companies around the Internet with lists of people who have agreed to receive information of interest from third parties. Therefore, the company argues, it is not spam.
"This is a simple breach of contract that allowed 2 percent complaint of mail, we didn't come within 1/1000 of that," said MonsterHut's Pelow, who added there was extensive communication between the two companies before the contract was signed. "We think PaeTec has backed themselves into a corner with their upstream provider, Verio."
What makes such a dispute so tough is that there are no federal laws specifically prohibiting spam or even defining what it is. Several bills, however, are being considered in Congress, including the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001, or HR95, which provides criminal penalties for anyone who intentionally sends spam from a bogus email address.
It also enforces ISP anti-spam policies and gives recipients and ISPs the right to act against spammers. But modifications made to the bill, which was passed by the House Commerce Committee last month, have taken some of the teeth out of its original form, consumer advocates say.
About 18 states have enacted spam legislation. California, for example, approved a bill in September 1998 that requires unsolicited commercial email to include opt-out instructions and contact information, and opt-out requests must be honored.
HR95 goes further by defining spam. Spam's three main characteristics are that it comes with forged return addresses, has deceiving headers, and doesn't allow consumers a valid way to opt out.
But MonsterHut says its email does not violate any of these guidelines. And more of this type of email will crop up on the Internet, according to Pelow.
"There's an enormous, growing body of mail where people send email with legitimate return addresses, with accurate headers and a working opt-out mechanism," he said. "Not all unsolicited email is spam. But the email most certainly comes from something you've done online where companies have partnerships to exchange that information."
