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              | Date: 1998-06-18 
 
 Anti/SPAM: Neue Initiative im U.S. Senat-.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.-
 
 q/depesche 98.6.18.1
 
 Anti/SPAM: Neue Initiative im U.S. Senat
 
 Senator Burns, ansonsten sehr konservativ, ist seit dem Communications Decency Act mehrmals als
 einer, der sich in net related affairs auskennt, aufgefallen.
 
 
 
 WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 1998 JUN 17 (NB) -- By Bill Pietrucha,
 Newsbytes. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) ripped into junk e-mail, also
 known as spam, on Wednesday. He called the act of spamming "a threat to
 computer networks across the nation."
 
 "Spamming is truly the scourge of the Information Age," Burns, chairman
 of the communications subcommittee of the Senate's Commerce, Science
 and Transportation Committee said at a hearing today.
 
 The hearing, Burns said, was called to "explore legislation to deal
 with the problem."
 
 "The Internet has provided tremendous commercial and educational
 opportunities to people across the globe," Burns said. "Unfortunately,
 however, the revolution on communications technology has also allowed
 for unscrupulous actors to intrude on the privacy of Americans with the
 digital equivalent of junk mail."
 
 Spamming is "especially troublesome" to consumers in rural areas, such
 as Burns' home state of Montana. Burns' constituents and other rural
 residents "must pay long distance charges to receive these unwanted
 solicitations, many of which contain fraudulent messages," he said.
 
 Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), concurred with Burns. "Junk e-mail is
 a particular burden to our rural constituents in Alaska and Montana who
 must pay a long distance charge to access the Internet," he told the
 hearing.
 
 Earlier this year, Murkowski and Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.)
 included a spam provision in S. 1618, the Telephone Anti-Slamming Act,
 which passed the Senate last month on a 99-0 vote. That provision would
 require honest identification of junk e-mailers and that consumer
 remove request that must be honored.
 
 "Our measure would weed out the bad actors of the Internet by
 requiring identification of online marketers, as well as requiring
 that `remove' requests are honored," Murkowski said.
 
 Responding to calls for an outright ban on junk e-mail however,
 Murkowski said that "such a ban would establish a dangerous precedent
 and would erode the protections of the First Amendment."
 
 "The government simply should not dictate what a consumer sees in his
 or her mailbox," he said.
 
 "We have been down this road before with the Communications Decency
 Act," Murkowski said. "The Supreme Court by a unanimous vote has made
 very clear what it thinks of such sweeping bans of Internet material.
 Consumers should have the final word in deciding what comes into their
 mailboxes, not the government."
 
 Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs for the
 Direct Marketing Association (DMA), agreed with Murkowski's stance
 against an outright junk e-mail ban. "Electronic commerce, of which e-
 mail is a part, is new," Cerasale told the hearing. "The government, no
 matter how good its intentions, should not strangle electronic commerce
 at birth."
 
 Cerasale said the DMA envisions a two-pronged "opt-out" program, where
 the recipient of an unsolicited bulk e-mail should be able to request
 that the marketer not send any more e-mails simply by hitting the reply
 key.
 
 The second prong of DMA's approach, he said, is to create an "e-mail
 preference service" which would allow consumers to add their e-mail
 addresses, online, to a list at no charge. Marketers then would use
 this list to delete the addresses from their e-mail file.
 
 "Prohibition of e-mail will not allow the growth" of the Internet,
 Cerasale said. "The DMA believes the government should enhance its
 efforts to combat fraud on the Internet and, specifically, in e-mail."
 
 But other groups are looking at other junk e-mail legislation working
 its way through Congress.
 
 Rachel Luxemburg, owner of America Communications in New York, and a
 member of the Internet Service Providers' Consortium (ISP/C), said the
 ISP/C supports Rep. Christopher Smith's (R-N.J.) Netizens Protection
 Act of 1997, H.R. 1748, which places the burden of the delivery cost of
 e-mail advertising on the advertiser, by ensuring that consumers will
 only get advertising which they actually want and agree to receive.
 
 The spam ban would include all unsolicited commercial e-mail, including
 get-rich-quick schemes, electronic dating services, offers of unproved
 medical remedies and other solicitations that ultimately cost consumers
 in online charges, unlike regular junk mail.
 
 The bill, Smith said, "will help people not only with the nuisance of
 spam but the costs as well."
 
 Smith added that anyone wanted to continue to receive spam mail could
 do so under the Netizens Protection Act.
 
 Relaed by Newsbytes News Network: <A HREF="http://www.newsbytes.com"
 
 
 
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 edited by Harkank
 published on: 1998-06-18
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