A SLIPPERY SLOPE WE SHOULD BE ON

Crack Down on Spam (NY Times, April 29, 2003)

No one with an e-mail account needs to be told that unwanted commercial messages, better known as spam, are a bad problem that is getting worse. America Online reports that 70 percent of the e-mail its users receive is now junk, and that the quantity has doubled just since the beginning of this year. Much of the increase is being fueled by Internet marketing companies, which charge as little as $500 to send out a million e-mail messages. Internet service providers have taken steps to clamp down on spam, but the tools at their disposal are limited. Congress needs to help. [...]

A bill introduced by Senators Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, and Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, would require that unsolicited marketing e-mail have valid return e-mail addresses, making it easier for recipients to remove themselves from mass e-mail lists or for Internet service providers and states to sue spammers. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, is introducing a bill that would require the Federal Trade Commission to maintain a no-spam list, like the no-call lists for telemarketing phone calls, and impose stiff penalties on marketers who repeatedly sent spam to people who had opted out.

If these bills were put up for a popular vote, they would be passed handily. But the direct marketing industry has been lobbying hard for its right to keep sending spam. People should tell their Congressional representatives how strongly they feel about fighting spam--one e-mail note per person, please.

There's an interesting question implicated here, though the Timesmen predictably dodge it: if it's okay to disregard the Free Speech claims of spammers because it is merely commercial and we find their speech annoying and possibly destructive of an important social institution (the Internet), then why not disregard similarly absolutist claims by other merely commercial speakers, whose speech serves none of the purposes for which the Constitution was framed, for instance, pornographers? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 29, 2003 8:02 AM