The U.S.'s California Assembly late last Thursday night approved a bill that would make it illegal to send e-mail using a forged domain name, and would allow Internet service providers to take spammers to court.
In doing so, California joins a growing list of states that have attempted to legislate spam. Federal bills are also being considered to deal with the problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail.
The California bill, which was first introduced January 5, prohibits companies from sending email in violation of an ISP's stated policies. The bill would allow California-based ISPs to sue the company that sent the e-mail and to seek damages of $US50 per e-mail sent for up to $US25,000 plus attorney's fees.
In a release, Assembly Gary Miller said that the while the bill protects California ISPs, " there is still work to be done on the national level."
There are, in fact, a few bills currently working their way through U.S. Congress. The U.S. House Telecommunications subcommittee approved a bill Aug. 6 that would require advertisements to be labeled as such, and force senders to list theirnames and postal addresses.
On the state level, Washington and Nevada have both passed laws that attempt to regulate spam and make it illegal to use a fake return address.
"Giving ISPs the means of redress is a very good place to have it,because they're the ones who suffer the most direct costs from spamming, and they also have the economies of scale to try to recoup some of those costs through legal action," said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters, an anti-junk mail company based in Green Brook, N.J. "A tremendous amount of legal energy has been spent in the past trying to quantify the amount of monetary damage spent by ISPs Its very complex. Having astatute that specifies the levels of damage just simplifies and speeds up the litigation enormously."
