• by Masha Geller , September 8, 2003

Here's an interesting opinion on spam, or at least one that attracted my attention this morning as I was in the process of deleting 563 (yes, I counted) weekend spam messages from my inbox.

Quinn Jalli, an attorney who has lobbied in California and on Capitol Hill on behalf of SF-based email company Mindshare Design, wrote a column for Directmag.com last week, outlining his views on the three leading bills - CAN-Spam (S.877), Rid Spam (H.R. 2214) or the Anti-Spam Act of 2003 (H.R. 2515) - and whether any of them have a shot at stopping spam.

"The proposed federal laws ... put the weapons in the right combatants' hands," he wrote. "Will the bills stop spam? Of course not. But legislation will silence the biggest liars and the ISPs can decide on a case-by-case basis what standard they want to apply to their recipients' email."

Jalli's argument focuses on the fact that "spammers lie" about everything from who they are to where they are, and that once those lies result in fines, "we will see the beginning of the end of the spam epidemic."

He writes that if any of the three bills were passed (and they're almost identical, so it doesn't much matter which one reaches law status first,) ISPs would be empowered to sue those senders who forge header information, subject lines or fail to include a working opt-out link. Already, he says, Earth-Link has won a $16.4 million suit over spammer Howard Carmack, and one law firm in Utah has filed more than 2,000 anti-spam lawsuits.

Sounds promising, doesn't it? My only concern is, if the ISPs don't know who or where the spammers are, how are they going to prosecute them and will they really expend the time and money to do so? Discuss.