Re: Murkowski

On Wed, 07 Apr 1999 10:53:41 +0200, nick@localhost wrote:

> Senator Murkowski who, in a sudden tactical move with another
> Senator, managed to rush an opt-out style antispam bill into
> existence last year (though it was later lost in the Congress)
> has recently announced his intention to have another go (he
> describes his proposed new legislation as "similar"), see
> 
> <http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/commercialemail/EMailAmendText.html>.
> 
> While he appears to be committed enough to the cause of antispam,
> it is by no means clear that he has yet grasped the difference
> between opt-out and opt-in and thus - given his demonstrated
> penchant for unexpected tactics - his renewed activity should
> probably be tagged by at least one observer on the US scene.
> 
It is.  By CAUCE.  There was a press release with some mention of CAUCE
trying to work with the staffs of both Senators Murkowski and Toricelli in
order to get some improvement in the bill.  As they put it:

  S.759 would require valid contact information to be included in
  unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) messages, would prohibit forgery of
  headers and would require the honoring of "remove me from your mailing
  list"  requests. 
   
  While "domain owners" could publish and enforce "no UCE accepted here" 
  notices under the bill, Internet service providers (ISPs) would be
  required to maintain and make available to marketers a list of their
  users who had requested to receive UCE. Both domain owners and ISPs would
  be required to register their preferences with the Federal Trade
  Commission.
 
  "We remain concerned that this bill does not take notice of the
  well-documented costs of unsolicited commercial e-mail, and allows it as
  long as basic conditions are met," noted Everett-Church.  

  "We are pleased that the bill recognizes the role of domain operators in
  setting policies for their networks," noted Everett-Church. "But if a
  service provider wishes to avail themselves of the limited
  protections under the bill, they must relinquish substantial rights in
  setting system policies. That fact will make this bill unacceptable to
  most service providers."
  
  Enforcement of the bills' provisions would be the province of the Federal
  Trade Commission, state attorneys general and ISPs. There is no provision
  for user-level enforcement. State laws about commercial e-mail,
  unsolicited or otherwise, would be preempted by the legislation. 
   

> It shouldn't be possible for upcoming legislation to take people
> by surprise, but that's exactly what happened last time, hence
> this note to alert anyone (or anyone's US contact/s) who may be
> in a position to implement effective monitoring of the Senator's
> renewed political activities on the Internet's behalf....

So far, even the board of CAUCE is quiet (and I am on it as an observer)
which at this stage of the game is a good thing.  Since an interest has
been expressed, I will make a point of informing this list as soon as I
hear (or see) anything.

ObEurope: so that nobody is taken by surprise, please have a look at
http://www.euro.cauce.org/timeline.html for an overview of what was
supposed to happen, when, and in which committee; and
http://www.euro.cauce.org/amendments.html for all the tabled amendments to
Article 7 (the UCE article) in the proposed directive on electronic
commerce.  EuroCAUCE and EuroISPA are supporting the amendment appearing in
the opinion of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the
Media to the Committee for Legal Affairs and Citizens' Rights in the
European Parliament.

GWM
-- 
Confucius say, 
"Great man does what is moral, small man does only what is profitable."
Do what is moral, help stop junk email, support CAUCE: http://www.cauce.org
and EuroCAUCE: http://www.euro.cauce.org  and CAUBE.AU http://www.caube.org.au