SCN: WAISP Legislative Update 04/01/01 (fwd)

[Joel Ware IV]

Here's the latest from WAISP.
Note: There is a federal anti-UCE/SPAM bill pending ... see below.

Regards,
    -Joel.

Joel Ware, IV           jw4 at scn.org
Volunteer Coordinator Emeritus, Member of Governance, HR, Ops, Board

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 14:20:13 -0700
From: Gary Gardner--Executive Director <exec-director at waisp.org>
To: announcements at waisp.org
Subject: WAISP Legislative Update 04/01/01

The Washington State legislature is rapidly winding down, there are but
three weeks left in this legislative session.  This past Friday was the
cut-off date for bills to be heard by committees in opposite houses, i.e.
Senate bills in the House Committee etc.

We are down to one bill that we are working on for WAISP in this session --
it is the ban on the WUTC approving a mandatory measured service tariff.
The bill is HB 1287, and the ban would extend until 2004.   The legislature
is set to adjourn on Sunday, April 22nd.

However, back in the OTHER Washington, the US Congress is debating an
anti-SPAM/UCE bill and the US House Commerce Committee passed their version
of it last week.  The debate, and the bill, have many of the same
provisions the Washington State law that WAISP helped pass back in 1998.
Even the debate and the changes made mirror the debate here.

The bill is HR 718 and was sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico),
and you can access it here:
http://www.cauce.org/legislation/HR718-fullcmte-final.pdf

WAISP has been working with members of the Commerce Committee on the bill,
and the bill as passed does the following:

Requires an accurate return address on UCE, and a physical business address
for the sender.
Makes it illegal to continue sending junk email to someone after they have
asked to be removed from the senders list.
Require UCE to be labeled.
Require ISPs to let their customers opt-out of getting junk e-mail if the
ISP profits from allowing it into their system.
Sets a penalty for continuing to send junk e-mail after someone has asked
for it to stop.
Allows ISPs to have a junk e-mail policy and sue spammers for $500 per
message if they violate the policy.
Authorizes the FTC to go after junk e-mailers who violate the law.
Creates a misdemeanor offense in criminal law for intentionally using
fraudulent return addresses or routing information, including domain name,
header information, date or time stamp, originating electronic mail address
or other information identifying the initiations or sender of such message.
Allows individuals to also sue senders of junk e-mail in violation of the law.

Unfortunately however, the Committee also made some changes that have
caused some of the more aggressive anti-UCE coalitions to withdraw support
for the bill.  Other organizations and large ISPs such as Earthlink and AOL
have not withdrawn their support.

Those provisions include requiring ISPs to use filtering software to block
SPAM before taking legal action.

I look at this bill as very similar to the WAISP efforts in 1998 -- and we
ended up holding our noses so to speak after NOT getting everything we
wanted and passing a much weaker bill.  However, as the old adage goes, a
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

This bill has a long way to go before it becomes law -- it next goes to the
House Judiciary Committee for further work, and then to the full house and
all over again on the Senate side.  WAISP will continue to work on the bill
to make it as strong as possible -- recognizing that Congress is not going
to give us the perfect "opt-in" bill prohibiting SPAM, as much as we'd like
them to.







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