smit

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...tech_spam_dc_1



how do they think they can possibly enforce this?

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Snake Doctor

By jailing and fining the people who break the law??

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smit

but spamming is illegal anyways, why would anyone abide by this?

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PersianKitty

Here's the FTC article about it.. there's a bit more to it..


FTC Adopts Rule That Requires Notice That Spam Contains Sexually-Explicit Material

Starting May 19th 2004, spam that contains sexually oriented material must include the warning ?SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: ? in the subject line or face fines for violations of federal law. The CAN-SPAM Act, passed by Congress in 2003, directed the Federal Trade Commission to adopt a rule requiring a mark or notice to be included in spam that contains sexually oriented material. The purpose of the notice is to inform recipients that a spam message contains sexually oriented material and to make it easier to filter out messages they do not wish to receive. Establishing the mark was one of several actions Congress directed the Commission to undertake by enacting the CAN-SPAM Act, which was signed into law on December 16, 2003. The CAN-SPAM Act required the Commission to prescribe the mark or notice within 120 days after passage of the Act.

The Commission published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register on January 29, 2004, and accepted comments until February 17, 2004. The Commission received 89 comments, mostly from individual consumers.

The FTC?s final rule prescribes the phrase ?SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: ? as the mark or notice mandated by the CAN-SPAM Act. The final rule follows the intention of the CAN-SPAM Act to protect email recipients from unwitting exposure to unwanted sexual images in spam, by requiring this mark to be included both in the subject line of any e-mail message that contains sexually oriented material, and in the electronic equivalent of a ?brown paper wrapper? in the hahahaha of the message. This ?brown paper wrapper? is what a recipient initially will see when opening a message containing sexually oriented material. The ?brown paper wrapper will include the prescribed mark or notice, certain other specified information, and no other information or images.

There are four ways in which the final rule differs from the rule as originally proposed in the notice of proposed rulemaking:

* The final mark is shorter than the proposed version. The Commission proposed that the mark be "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-CONTENT: ". Commenters opined that an excessively long mark would tend to crowd out all or part of what the sender might wish to say in the subject line. The Agency determined that a shorter mark,"SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: ", likely can achieve the desired purpose as well, or nearly as well, as the longer mark; The final rule excludes sexually oriented materials from the subject line of a sexually explicit email message;

* The final rule requires the mandatory disclosure of the sender?s ?valid physical postal address? to be ?clear and conspicuous,? like the other required disclosures; and

* The final rule requires that the mark appear using elements of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange ("ASCII") character set, and a definition of the term ?character? has been added as part of that change.

In addition, in response to a comment received from the Department of Justice, the Statement of Basis and Purpose clarifies that the Commission interprets provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act that direct the FTC to prescribe the mark to cover both visual images and written descriptions of sexually explicit conduct.

The Commission vote to approve publication of the Federal Register notice was 5-0.

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Snake Doctor

no its not illegal. There are just lots of rules and regulations now regarding spam.
The can spam act is still very new, did you think they were going to prosecute 10 people the first day?
It takes time to build up a case but there will be prosecutions, especially for the people who send unsolicited XXX to people.

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PersianKitty

And here's the actual rule in PDF format.


http://www.ftc.gov/os/2004/04/040413...lfinalrule.pdf

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PersianKitty

and for anyone wondering what the punishments are..the text of the CAN-SPAM act can be found at
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html

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latinasojourn

reasonable people do not need much governing.

society enacts law to control the unreasonable.

and this law is necessary, because only human debris will send hardcore porn unsolicited into someone else's email account cloaked with a misleading subject line.

there's a reason why many ordinary folk hate the smut peddlers---and foisting smut onto the unwary is one of the biggest reasons.

stev0

spam is evil... not as bad as spyware though.

JulianSosa

How do they define sexually oriented material?
Do dating cam sites apply?
Does I friends apply?
Does adult friend finder apply?