Technology executives who testified to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation yesterday generally agreed that some form of legislation is needed, but that for the most part the industry should self-regulate.
Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates submitted a letter to the committee in which he praised advances in filtering technology, adding: But technology is not the only answer. Effective and complementary self-regulation efforts by the industry are crucial.
Gates said an independent trust authority should be established, with the cooperation of the industry, which would develop best practices, issue seals to make it easier to distinguish wanted from unwanted email, and deal with customer disputes.
He also said that federal legislation should identify the basic components that industry guidelines must address, such as notice and choice obligations, but permit the industry to take the lead in developing the specific guidelines within these parameters.
Gates’ also suggested that legislation should give ISPs explicit rights to block spam without fear of liability and to sue those who spam their subscribers.
If Gates offered some concrete proposals, they were more to do with enabling legitimate email marketers than they were about banning spam outright. Other companies that also make money from email ads had similar testimony.
AOL Time Warner Inc’s vice chairman Ted Leonis, for example, presented suggestions for how Congress could help set baseline rules of the road for legitimate marketers who use the e-mail medium to reach consumers.
Leonis presented his company’s view that what he called outlaw spammers are primarily responsible for the current pandemic. Outlaw spammers falsify their addresses or hack or open fraudulent email accounts, he said.
He added: Government action is critical to deterring ‘outlaw’ spammers. Leonis said tough criminal penalties must be created for prosecuting spammers who use fraudulent techniques to send spam.
In his testimony, BrightMail CEO Enrique Salem cited a recent Federal Trade Commission report that said 56% of spam does not fit the legal definition for fraud. He also suggested that the issue for government is not legislation, but enforcement.
Spamming is a global problem… Governments cannot impose regional laws on assailants outside their boundaries, Salem said. Legislation may help to deter some spammers… But, enforcement is key and will prove expensive and difficult.
Salem, whose company sells spam-filtering services, stopped short of asking for legislation that would stop spam, instead recommending guidelines that outline email best practices that must be followed by direct marketers.
Salem said that it is critical to set the expectations of the public at the right level as far as the real impact of legislation on the volume of spam received. A coordinated effort on the part of ISPs, marketers, the legislature and law enforcement is needed, he said.
The lone voice of the consumer on the panel, made up representatives of organizations that gain revenue from either sending email ads or selling products that stop them, was Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Commercial marketers who engage in bulk e-mail advertising may be reluctant to concede that their messages are spam even though the vast majority of recipients find the messages burdensome and undesirable, he said.
Rotenberg was the only witness to strongly recommend Congress pass legislation requiring marketers to only send email to people who have explicitly opted in, and allowing consumers to sue their spammers.
While the industry’s desire to avoid regulation is understandable, here the failure to establish strong measures to limit spam are contributing to a tragedy of the commons that threatens to undermine the commercial potential of the internet, he said.
Source: Computerwire
