When the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced a US$2.9 million settlement with online marketing firm ValueClick this month, it was a record monetary settlement under the 4-year-old CAN-SPAM Act.
That announcement came just days after so-called spam king Robert Soloway pleaded guilty in Seattle to a number of criminal charges. Soloway, who faced one count related to CAN-SPAM in addition to
mail fraud, wire fraud and other charges, faces up to 26 years in prison.
But despite these recent court cases, some critics don't see a lot of value in CAN-SPAM, short for Controlling the Assault
of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing.
"CAN-SPAM has had virtually no impact on the spam problem at large," said Ray Everett-Church, a longtime spam fighter and
director of policy and professional services at Habeas, a company that provides e-mail authentication services. "It has enabled the FTC to take action against a few bad actors,
and that has worked to deter some otherwise legitimate companies from playing fast and loose with the rules."
But spam is as big of a problem as ever, and the worst spammers "remain unfazed and undeterred" by CAN-SPAM, Everett-Church
said. Everett-Church and other antispam activists criticize CAN-SPAM for allowing marketers to send unsolicited commercial
e-mail until people opt out.
Harvard University technology security officer Scott Bradner called spam prosecutions and settlements "all too rare" in a
recent column in Network World. "To say that the FTC has been careful in its approach to enforcing this act would be misleading -- a better word would be
'lethargic' or maybe 'comatose,'" he wrote.
Officials with the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice say criminal spam cases can be difficult to investigate because
spammers often hide their identities through falsified e-mail headers, offshore servers, and affiliate senders and payment
processors. Still, the DOJ has prosecuted about a dozen criminal spam cases in the past four years, and the FTC has taken
civil action in 31 CAN-SPAM cases, according to officials at both agencies.
The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.
