(Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)
Page 1 | Page 2 |
Page 3 | Page 4 |
Page 5
| Page 6 | PDF Version
S.877
One Hundred Eighth Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE FIRST SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,
the seventh day of January, two thousand and three
An Act
To regulate interstate commerce by imposing limitations and penalties
on the transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail via the Internet.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited
Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003', or the `CAN-SPAM Act of 2003'.
SECTION 2. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS AND POLICY.
(a) FINDINGS- The Congress finds the following:
(1) Electronic mail has become an extremely important and popular means
of communication, relied on by millions of Americans on a daily basis
for personal and commercial purposes. Its low cost and global reach make
it extremely convenient and efficient, and offer unique opportunities
for the development and growth of frictionless commerce.
(2) The convenience and efficiency of electronic mail are threatened by
the extremely rapid growth in the volume of unsolicited commercial
electronic mail. Unsolicited commercial electronic mail is currently
estimated to account for over half of all electronic mail traffic, up
from an estimated 7 percent in 2001, and the volume continues to rise.
Most of these messages are fraudulent or deceptive in one or more
respects.
(3) The receipt of unsolicited commercial electronic mail may result in
costs to recipients who cannot refuse to accept such mail and who incur
costs for the storage of such mail, or for the time spent accessing,
reviewing, and discarding such mail, or for both.
(4) The receipt of a large number of unwanted messages also decreases
the convenience of electronic mail and creates a risk that wanted
electronic mail messages, both commercial and non-commercial, will be
lost, overlooked, or discarded amidst the larger volume of unwanted
messages, thus reducing the reliability and usefulness of electronic
mail to the recipient.
(5) Some commercial electronic mail contains material that many
recipients may consider vulgar or pornographic in nature.
(6) The growth in unsolicited commercial electronic mail imposes
significant monetary costs on providers of Internet access services,
businesses, and educational and non-profit institutions that carry and
receive such mail, as there is a finite volume of mail that such
providers, businesses, and institutions can handle without further
investment in infrastructure.
(7) Many senders of unsolicited commercial electronic mail purposefully
disguise the source of such mail.
(8) Many senders of unsolicited commercial electronic mail purposefully
include misleading information in the messages' subject lines in order
to induce the recipients to view the messages.
(9) While some senders of commercial electronic mail messages provide
simple and reliable ways for recipients to reject (or `opt-out' of)
receipt of commercial electronic mail from such senders in the future,
other senders provide no such `opt-out' mechanism, or refuse to honour
the requests of recipients not to receive electronic mail from such
senders in the future, or both.
(10) Many senders of bulk unsolicited commercial electronic mail use
computer programs to gather large numbers of electronic mail addresses
on an automated basis from Internet websites or online services where
users must post their addresses in order to make full use of the website
or service.
(11) Many States have enacted legislation intended to regulate or reduce
unsolicited commercial electronic mail, but these statutes impose
different standards and requirements. As a result, they do not appear to
have been successful in addressing the problems associated with
unsolicited commercial electronic mail, in part because, since an
electronic mail address does not specify a geographic location, it can
be extremely difficult for law-abiding businesses to know with which of
these disparate statutes they are required to comply.
(12) The problems associated with the rapid growth and abuse of
unsolicited commercial electronic mail cannot be solved by Federal
legislation alone. The development and adoption of technological
approaches and the pursuit of cooperative efforts with other countries
will be necessary as well.
(b) CONGRESSIONAL DETERMINATION OF PUBLIC POLICY- On the basis of the
findings in subsection (a), the Congress determines that--
(1) there is a substantial government interest in regulation of
commercial electronic mail on a nationwide basis;
(2) senders of commercial electronic mail should not mislead recipients
as to the source or content of such mail; and
(3) recipients of commercial electronic mail have a right to decline to
receive additional commercial electronic mail from the same source.
Page 1 | Page 2 |
Page 3 | Page 4 |
Page 5
| Page 6 | PDF Version
All services are supplied subject to both our
Acceptable Usage Policy and Terms & Conditions.