Its only fair that we publish a different, more hopeful point of view on the CAN-SPAM issue. Larry Seltzer at eWeek writes that this law, while certainly not the silver bullet to end all spam, is still a welcome start.. . .
Its only fair that we publish a different, more hopeful point of view on the CAN-SPAM issue. Larry Seltzer at eWeek writes that this law, while certainly not the silver bullet to end all spam, is still a welcome start.

We appear to be on the verge of having a national law on the problem of spam. The CAN-SPAM act would preempt the numerous attempts that have been made by various states to regulate the issue. (Here's a PDF file of the latest version of the bill.) There's a lot of common sense in the bill and it's both good for the covered spamming practices to be made illegal and important that this become a national law. But the CAN-SPAM act won't make a substantial difference in the actual amount of spam you receive.

CAN-SPAM is actually an acronym for the full name of the bill: "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003." The version I linked to above is the one most recently passed by the Senate. The final version will be very close to it and President Bush is expected to sign it.

The link for this article located at eWeek is no longer available.