House Considers Anti-Spam Act

doctorfaustus writes "According to CNET, The Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act of 1999 is being considered by the House of Representatives today." He echoes a lot of people's concerns when he calls this "taking a baseball bat to a pingpong ball." You can sue for $500 per email (!), and if the spammer doesn't stop, that amount triples. What effect will this have on valid internet communication?

(We'd provide a Thomas link, but as doctorfaustus points out, it doesn't seem very up-to-date.)

This is the wrong solution

[sam_vilain]

I don't like the idea of having to let the FCC know my email address if I don't want spam. I would just like all spam to require a certain standard header that indicates it to be bulk email, so that I can filter it out.

Best of all Possible

[else...if]

It's unfortunate that we need an opt-out system where we have to actively remove ourselves, but it's a worthwhile sacrifice to avoid the potential constitutional issues. Personally, I have no problem with sending one e-mail to get rid of spam forever.

Finally, A great idea

[Malto]

I think that this would be a great step in stopping spam. It is very annoying when I recieve a lot of spam emails, this way I will actually want to keep the same email address for a while instead of only a few months.