|
Very few pieces of legislation pass the House of Representatives by a wider margin than did HR 3113, the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2000. The vote was an astounding 427-1.
Unfortunately, HR 3113 died in the Senate without a vote. A new version of the bill will come before the new congress and has a good chance of passing.
Here are the highlights of HR 3113:
-
Permits an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to sue spammers from its network or subscribers in violation of the ISP's clear and publicly available spam policy. The ISP may recover statutory damages of $500 per message, with a cap of $50,000.
-
Requires those sending junk email to identify their messages as advertising, include a valid return address, and to honor requests from individuals that they be permanently removed from the sender's mailing list. An individual aggrieved by a violation may recover statutory damages of $500 per violation.
-
Immunizes an ISP from any liability for blocking or filtering that the ISP believes, in good faith, constitute unsolicited commercial email.
-
Criminalizes the forging of domain names, header information, dates and times, or the originating email address for unsolicited commercial email.
|
