A controversial bill that may make certain forms of spam legal has passed the US House of Representatives’ Telecom Subcommittee, dashing the hopes of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email that the legislation could be dropped altogether (CI No 3,465). CAUCE is most concerned about language added to the HR 3888 bill by Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Bill Tauzin. This language would legalize spam as long as it was labeled with the words This is unsolicited commercial email somewhere in the text. The idea is that ISPs or users could configure their software to filter out messages thus labeled. There are a few problems with that: one is that articles like this one would be filtered on the assumption that they are spam. More seriously, filtering implemented at the internet service provider level dramatically reduces server performance, whereas filtering performed at the desktop level does nothing to address the problem of consumers having to pay to download junk mail. In spite of these problems, the bill was marked up with Tauzin’s amendment and approved with a voice vote. Next stop is the full House Commerce Committee. HR 3888 will get there some time after the House’s August recess.
