Spam Junk Email Laws
Since you are on the web reading this, you definitely know about spam. Spam junk email laws finally exist to regulate this industry, but not in the way you might think.
Spam Junk Email Laws
Spam is simply the sending of unsolicited commercial email to people. The people sending the emails are known as spammers. They typically have a fairly complex system that uses proxy servers to send out millions of emails a day. Proxy servers are essentially third party serves that act as a middleman between the recipient and the spammer. The idea is to create a buffer against complaints. For spammers, the entire game is trying to get through the filters in email systems that block spam. As you have probably noticed, they are pretty good at it.
As of 2006, it is estimated that 55 billion spam messages are sent each day. Recent studies have suggested that 80 to 90 percent of all the messages you receive are actually spam. Obviously, that is a lot of spam and a lot of resources being used to send it.
As was often the case, there was nothing illegal about sending spam junk email for a long time. The internet was a new medium and Congress takes a long time to act. As complaints grew, Congress finally got into the game. Senators and Representatives actually learned how to use email after Al Gore told them how he had invented the internet. Such are the workings of our government.
As complaints grew, the general consensus was that spam junk email laws should be designed to make even the sending of one junk email a criminal offense. There was one small problem, however. The Supreme Court long ago acknowledged that businesses had the right to send unsolicited business information under the 1st Amendment. Practically speaking, this is why you get all the junk mail in your mailbox. The complete ban of junk email was thus impossible.
In 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act came into being. Much to the disgust of many, it did not outlaw the sending of unsolicited commercial emails. Instead, it regulated the process. Businesses could send unsolicited junk emails so long as they followed a couple of requirements. They had to have people opt in to the lists, have the right to opt out of them and had to include various statements in the email regarding who sent the message and so on. As you know from looking at your email box, the legislation did practically nothing to stop spam as we know it. Instead, it legitimized it.
As the amount of spam continues to grow, you can bet this issue will be revisited sometime soon. The current spam junk email laws are simply not working.