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REDUCTION IN DISTRIBUTION OF SPAM

ACT OF 2003

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, 

AND HOMELAND SECURITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

H.R. 2214

JULY 8, 2003

Serial No. 42

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/judiciary 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., Wisconsin, Chairman 

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee 

CHRIS CANNON, Utah 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama 

JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana 

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California

PHILIP G. KIKO, Chief of Staff-General Counsel 

PERRY H. APELBAUM, Minority Chief Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina, Chairman

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts

JAY APPERSON, Chief Counsel 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Counsel 

ELIZABETH SOKUL, Counsel 

KATY CROOKS, Counsel 

PATRICIA DEMARCO, Full Committee Counsel 

BOBBY VASSAR, Minority Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

JULY 8, 2003

OPENING STATEMENT 

Page 

The Honorable Howard Coble, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of North Carolina, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and 

Homeland Security ............................................................................................... 1

The Honorable Robert C. Scott, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Virginia, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, 

and Homeland Security ....................................................................................... 4

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Jerry Kilgore, Attorney General of Virginia 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 6

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 8

The Honorable William Moschella, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs, United States Department of Justice 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 13

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 15

Mr. Joseph S. Rubin, Senior Director of Public and Congressional Affairs 

and Executive Director of Technology and e-Commerce, United States 

Chamber of Commerce 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 19

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 21

Mr. Chris Murray, Legislative Counsel, Consumers Union 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 25

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 27

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Howard Coble, a Representative in 

Congress From the State of North Carolina, and Chairman, Subcommittee 

on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security ................................................... 3

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Bob Goodlatte, a Representative in 

Congress From the State of Virginia .................................................................. 53

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative 

in Congress From the State of Texas ................................................................. 54

Letter and Corrected Prepared Statement from William Moschella, Assistant 

Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs, United States Department 

of Justice ............................................................................................................... 55

Letter from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) .................................... 65

(1)

REDUCTION IN DISTRIBUTION OF SPAM

ACT OF 2003

TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in Room 

2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard Coble (Chair 

of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. COBLE. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security is conducting a legislative hearing on H.R. 2214, the ‘‘Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act of 2003.’’ E-mail has been the primary driver of Internet usage. It has revolutionized the way people and businesses communicate with each 

other. E-mail has been heralded as the so-called ‘‘killer app.’’ Now 

that is a trendy term, and I am not a very trendy guy, but I think 

technologists would know what I am talking about, an application 

that every computer user wants, has and uses. The increasing 

problem of unwanted e-mail or spam is threatening, as one observer put it, to, quote, kill the killer app, close quote. Recent studies suggest that 40 percent or more of all e-mail in the system is 

spam. Not long ago, spam was a mere annoyance, but its exponential growth may now be clogging the lanes of the information 

superhighway. No one likes spam, but the vexing challenge is, 

what can we do about it without causing unintended harms to the 

Internet and e-commerce? 

The increased use of the Internet and e-mail for electronic commerce is certainly desirable. In fact, the Congress has encouraged, 

through such measures as e-signatures and various e-Government 

initiatives, the full use of the Internet to conduct e-commerce. Email, more than anything else, has been the most common way to 

facilitate e-commerce between buyers and sellers on the Internet. 

Businesses also use e-mail, much like the regular mail to market 

their products and services. In fact, e-mail marketing is viewed by 

many as a necessary and valuable component of electronic commerce. The market efficiencies that the Internet can provide consumers is facilitated by notices, specials, discounts and other offers 

that are immediately accessible to a large number of prospective 

customers unbounded by geography. Furthermore, new Internet 

technologies can better target offers to those potential buyers with 

the greatest likely interest while avoiding those with little or no inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Sep 10, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 G:\WORK\CRIME\070803\88203.000 HJUD1 PsN: 88203
2

terest. We should not lose sight of all these benefits as we grapple 

with the downside. 

Unfortunately, the same things that make e-mail a great tool of 

commerce can also lead to abuse by those who send spam. E-mail 

is instantaneous and virtually free. There are no stamps in cyberspace, no per-message costs like there are, for example, in bulk 

mail. There is really not even a post office. The costs of delivery 

are borne more by the recipient and the transmission network than 

by the sender. Because of that nature, there is little difference in 

the marginal cost to a spammer of sending a thousand e-mail messages, for example, versus several million. 

E-mail, like other means of communication, can be used to deceive, cheat, defraud and swindle consumers, but with much wider 

distribution possibilities. Spam is also a tool for the distribution of 

computer viruses. Additionally, some mass commercial e-mailers 

send pornography to unwilling recipients. Many spammers have 

become adept at fraudulent practices that conceal their identity 

and the type and route of their messages in order to evade detection. 

Many Internet users have always found any unwanted e-mail to 

be intrusive and annoying, but more recently it is the volume of 

spam itself that is generating complaints and very real problems 

for users. Internet service providers, who operate the networks over 

which e-mail flows, and legitimate businesses who rely on getting 

their messages through are also concerned about the cumulative effects of massive amounts of unwanted e-mail. AOL, the largest 

Internet Service Provider, now is blocking over 780 million junk emails per day. Recent studies estimate that spam will cost businesses who use e-mail more than $10 billion in lost productivity 

this year. Spam is undermining consumer confidence in the utility 

of e-mail and harming the ability of consumers and businesses to 

conduct legitimate e-commerce. 

There are already efforts under way by the Federal Trade Commission, by States and by ISPs to curb spam, but all these efforts 

clearly have their limitations. The question before us today is 

whether the spam problem has risen to a level that merits Federal 

legislation and whether such Federal legislation or regulation can 

be effective without causing unintended harm to e-commerce. 

H.R. 2214 was introduced by Mr. Burr, Mr. Sensenbrenner, Mr. 

Tauzin, Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. Upton, Ms. Hart and Mr. Stearns and 

Mr. Cannon on 22 May of this year. The bill is intended to curb 

the rising tide of unsolicited commercial e-mail—UCE—or spam by 

giving consumers more power to identify and decline unwanted 

commercial e-mail and by giving law enforcement and providers of 

Internet access service more tools to pursue and stop spammers. 

Title II of the bill in particular amends title 18 of the U.S. Code 

to provide significant criminal penalties and civil fines for the most 

egregious senders of spam—those who intentionally falsify their 

identity and the source of their messages, attack protected computers, harvest the addresses of unsuspecting Internet users and 

send unwanted sexually explicit materials. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony from our witnesses about 

the problem of spam and the potential help this legislation can provide. 

3

I am now pleased to recognize the distinguished gentleman from 

Virginia, the Ranking Member Mr. Bobby Scott. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Coble follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HOWARD COBLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

Good Morning. Today the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security is holding a legislative hearing on H.R. 2214, the ‘‘Reduction in Distribution 

of Spam Act of 2003.’’

E-mail has been the primary driver of Internet usage. It has revolutionized the 

way people and businesses communicate with each other. E-mail has been heralded 

as the so called ‘‘killer app,’’ an application that virtually every computer user 

wants, has, and uses. But the increasing problem of unwanted e-mail or ‘‘spam’’ is 

threatening, as one observer put it, to ‘‘kill the killer app.’’ Recent studies suggest 

that 40% or more of all e-mail in the system is spam. Not long ago spam was a 

mere annoyance, but its exponential growth may now be clogging the lanes of the 

information superhighway. No one likes spam but the vexing challenge is what can 

we do about it without causing unintended harms to the Internet and E-commerce? 

The increased use of the Internet and e-mail for electronic commerce is certainly 

desirable. In fact, the Congress has encouraged, through such measures as E-Signatures and various E-Government initiatives, the full use of the Internet to conduct 

‘‘E-commerce.’’ E-mail, more than anything else, has been the most common way to 

facilitate E-commerce between buyers and sellers on the Internet. 

Businesses also use e-mail, much like the regular mail, to market their products 

and services. In fact, e-mail marketing is viewed by many as a necessary and valuable component of electronic commerce. The market efficiencies that the Internet 

can provide consumers is facilitated by notices, specials, discounts, and other offers 

that are immediately accessible to a large number of prospective customers 

unbounded by geography. Furthermore, new Internet technologies can better target 

offers to those potential buyers with the greatest likely interest while avoiding those 

with little interest. We should not lose sight of all these benefits as we grapple with 

the downside. 

Unfortunately, the same things that make e-mail a great tool of commerce can 

also lead to abuse by those who send spam. E-mail is instantaneous and virtually 

free, there are no stamps in cyberspace, no per message costs like there are for bulk 

mail—there’s really not even a post office. The costs of delivery are borne more by 

the recipient and the transmission network than by the sender. Because of that nature, there is little difference in the marginal cost to a spammer of sending a thousand e-mail messages versus 100 million. 

E-mail, like other means of communication, can be used to deceive, cheat, defraud, 

and swindle consumers, but with much wider distribution possibilities. Spam is also 

a tool for the distribution of computer viruses. Additionally, some mass commercial 

e-mailers send pornography to unwilling recipients. Many spammers have become 

adept at fraudulent practices that conceal their identity and the type and route of 

their messages in order to evade detection. 

Many Internet users have always found any unwanted e-mail to be intrusive and 

annoying, but more recently it is the volume of spam itself that is generating complaints and very real problems for users. Internet Service Providers, who operate 

the networks over which e-mail flows, and legitimate businesses who rely on getting 

their messages through are also concerned about the cumulative effects of massive 

amounts of unwanted e-mail. AOL, the largest Internet Service Provider, is now 

blocking over 780 million junk e-mails per day. Recent studies estimate that spam 

will cost businesses who use e-mail more than $10 Billion in lost productivity this 

year. Spam is undermining consumer confidence in the utility of e-mail and harming 

the ability of consumers and businesses to do conduct legitimate E-commerce. 

There are already efforts under way by the Federal Trade Commission, by states, 

and by ISPs to curb spam—but all these efforts clearly have their limitations. The 

question before us today is whether the spam problem has risen to a level that merits federal legislation, and whether such federal legislation can be effective without 

over-regulating the Internet? 

H.R. 2214 was introduced by Mr. Burr, Mr. Sensenbrenner, Mr. Tauzin, Mr. 

Goodlatte, Mr. Upton, Ms. Hart, Mr. Stearns, and Mr. Cannon on May 22, 2003. 

The bill is intended to curb the rising tide of unsolicited commercial e-mail (‘‘UCE’’) 

or ‘‘spam’’ by giving consumers more power to identify and decline unwanted commercial email and by giving law enforcement and providers of internet access service more tools to pursue and stop spammers. 

4

Title II of the bill in particular amends Title 18 of the U.S. Code to provide significant criminal penalties and civil fines for the most egregious senders of spam—those 

who intentionally falsify their identity and the source of their messages, attack protected computers, harvest the addresses of unsuspecting internet users, and send 

unwanted sexually explicit materials. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses about the problem of 

spam and the potential help this legislation can provide. 

I would now recognize Mr. Scott for an opening statement.

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for 

holding the hearing on H.R. 2214, the Reduction in Distribution, or 

RID, Spam Act. 

All Internet users experience the problem we call spam. There 

are many definitions. To a large extent it is in the eye of the beholder, ranging from passing around jokes and chain letters to our 

families, friends and associates to bulk commercial e-mail. The primary components of spam are that it is unwanted and unsolicited. 

Add to this the problem of volume, intrusiveness and adding such 

things as cookies to your computer and popping up while you are 

in the middle of using the Internet, the cost of taking up space as 

well as having to take the time to delete the e-mail, and we have 

a problem with spam. 

Unsolicited and unwanted e-mails from families, friends and associates can be easily handled by gentle or not-so-gentle requests 

not to send it, so no law is needed to address that aspect of spam. 

The annoyance of such e-mail is simply part of the price we pay 

for an Internet-based principles for universal access and freedom. 

The procedures for preventing or stopping unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail have been increasingly inadequate, while the volume has increased exponentially. It takes substantial time, energy, 

expertise and increasingly more sophistication to develop products 

to address it. The average Internet user is not able to address it 

and is spending a lot of time just simply erasing the bulk e-mail. 

Estimates indicate that as much as 45 percent of e-mail traffic 

consists of this bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail. Moreover, much 

of this commercial e-mail contains either fraudulent, misleading or 

pornographic material. Increasingly, Internet users are defrauded 

of money or otherwise scammed by unscrupulous marketers. This 

is the type of spam the bill before us seeks to address. 

I look forward to our witnesses and how this problem can be effectively and efficiently dealt with. While I support the effort to restrict spam on the Internet in a matter similar to the way we found 

effective in addressing abusive unsolicited commercial communications through mails and telephone, I am concerned about the superfluous provisions in the bill such as preventing class actions and 

restricting attorneys’ fees and providing consumers with an opt-out 

rather than opt-in choice. Some of those may actually may hinder 

our efforts, rather than help. I am also not sure whether the bill 

before us rather than some other bills are the best way to address 

the issue. 

I also want to take a close look at the bill as we mark it up to 

be sure that we define our narrowly targeted—that we define the 

problem narrowly tailored enough to make sure that we don’t trample on the Constitution. Even commercially sponsored e-mail does 

have some first amendment protection. Just because e-mails come 

from a business doesn’t mean that the content is unprotected. So 

5

we want to make sure that what we are targeting is the unprotected speech under the first amendment. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you and look forward to the witnesses 

who will be testifying before us. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank you, Mr. Scott. 

We have an outstanding panel today, and Mr. Scott has requested the privilege to introduce his Attorney General. I am 

pleased to recognize Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Our first witness is the distinguished Attorney General from the 

Commonwealth of Virginia, Jerry Kilgore. He was elected Virginia’s 42nd Attorney General on November 6, 2001, receiving more 

than 60 percent of the vote. Prior to his election as Attorney General, he served in the Cabinet of former Governor George Allen, as 

the Secretary of Public Safety. 

He has served on the front lines of law enforcement as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney for Scott County, Virginia, and as 

Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. He received his law degree from the Marshall Witt School of Law at the 

College of William and Mary and is a graduate of the University 

of Virginia’s college at Wise. 

And, Mr. Chairman, it wasn’t part of his official bio, but I would 

want to point out that he has done a lot of work in the problem 

of identity theft. It is one of the problems we are dealing with, and 

we may want to take advantage of his expertise in that area as 

well as in the future. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Scott; and, Attorney General, good 

to have you with us. Good to have all the witnesses, and permit 

me now to introduce the remaining members of the panel. 

Our next witness is the Honorable William Moschella, Assistant 

Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. 

Department of Justice. Attorney General Moschella is a familiar 

face to the Judiciary Committee as he most recently served as its 

Chief Legislative Counsel and Parliamentarian. He also served as 

Chief Investigative Counsel for the Committee from 1999 through 

2001, as General Counsel for the House Rules Committee in 1999 

and with the House Government Reform Committee. Assistant Attorney General Moschella received his juris doctorate from the 

George Mason University School of Law and his bachelor degree 

from the University of Virginia. 

Good to have you back on the Hill, Will. I think I inadvertently 

promoted you to Attorney General, but don’t tell Mr. Ashcroft that. 

Our third witness will be Mr. Joe Rubin, the Senior Director for 

Public and Congressional Affairs and the Executive Director for 

Technology and E-commerce at the United States Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation, representing more than 3 million businesses of 

every size, sector and region in the country. Mr. Rubin serves as 

liaison between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Administration. 

Mr. Rubin, not unlike Mr. Moschella, is no stranger to this Committee. Prior to joining the Chamber, Joe was Legislative Director 

for Congressman George Gekas from Pennsylvania and Legislative 

Counsel for Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio where he handled 

6

Judiciary Committee issues. Mr. Rubin obtained his doctorate from 

the Emory School of Law and is a graduate of the University of 

Maryland. 

Our final witness, Mr. Chris Murray, is the Legislative Counsel 

for the Consumers Union, with an expertise in technology, communications, media policy and intellectual property issues. Consumers 

Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, is an independent nonprofit testing and information organization serving only consumers 

as a source of advice about products and services. 

Before joining Consumers Union, Mr. Murray was a Ford Foundation Media Arts and Cultural Fellow for 2 years, focusing on 

broadband and telecommunications issues. Mr. Murray worked 

with the firm Leslie Harris and Associates for clients such as the 

American Library Association and America Online. Mr. Murray is 

a graduate of Florida Southern College and received his law degree 

from Georgetown University. 

It is good to have all of you with us; and I will note at the outset 

that Attorney General Kilgore, although we are fortunate to have 

him—because I think you are scheduled to be in northern Virginia 

later, Mr. Kilgore, and I think you have to leave on or about 11 

o’clock. So if we don’t get to examine Mr. Kilgore as thoroughly as 

we would like to, I am sure you would be open to written questions 

submitted to you, Mr. Kilgore. 

I am pleased to indicate that we have been joined by the gentleman from California, gentlemen from Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. Good to have you with us. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I am notified that Congresswoman 

Jackson Lee is unable to attend today’s hearing because she is in 

Houston, TX, at the funeral of a constituent who died while serving 

his country in Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Kilgore, we will start with you; and, gentlemen, let me assure you, Mr. Scott and I try to operate on the 5-minute rule here. 

When you see that red light illuminate in your face, we will not 

send a U.S. Marshal after you, but you will know that the ice is 

becoming thin. 

So, Mr. Kilgore, for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JERRY W. KILGORE, 

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA 

Mr. KILGORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. 

Scott, for that kind introduction. It is great to be before this Committee. 

Virginia is the Internet capital of the world. More than half of 

all the Internet traffic in the world runs through Virginia, and 

more than half of all the Internet access to business and individuals is provided by Virginia companies. As you consider Federal 

anti-spam legislation, H.R. 2214, I am pleased to be able to address 

your Committee today on Virginia’s anti-spam law that went into 

effect just 7 days ago. 

It was not too long ago that none of us had heard of e-mail. But 

now we can’t live without it. Anyone who has e-mail now knows 

about spam, that frustrating, unwanted e-mail that shows up everyday by the dozens or hundreds in your computer’s in-box. 

7

The proliferation of spam has becoming increasingly frustrating 

to both users and the Internet Service Providers, also known as 

ISPs. Spam is technically defined as unsolicited bulk e-mail, UBE, 

or unsolicited commercial e-mail, UCE. Spam aggravates the average user and costs businesses millions of dollars in lost revenues. 

Virginia is home to many ISPs. Each day these ISPs are forced to 

use expensive technology and commit countless manpower hours to 

combat the millions of pieces of spam that are transmitted through 

these services. This spam is not only annoying, sometimes it is obscene. Spam has a direct, negative impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the free enterprise system and day-to-day operations 

of business. 

We live in a world that relies more and more on technology. In 

my office, we rely on technology a great deal, especially when time 

sensitive information is of concern; and spam certainly throws 

wrenches into that technology. 

Billions of pieces of bulk e-mail are sent every second of the day. 

While the Internet and technology are meant to improve the quality of our lives, many hours of stress are expended because of this 

problem. Deals can be lost and even jobs are lost because smaller 

ISPs simply cannot survive the toll spam provides. 

Virginia has had laws that attempted to deal with the growing 

problem of spam since 1999. The Virginia General Assembly 

amended the statutes defining crimes such as computer fraud, computer trespass and theft of computer services in recent years. 

These revisions attempted to cover the sending of unsolicited bulk 

e-mail and created a civil relief section that gave both consumers 

and the ISP the right to sue spammers for actual or statutory damages. These laws have been effectively used by Internet Service 

Providers to sue spammers from all over the country for violations. 

In fact, my office has twice successfully defended the constitutionality of Virginia’s anti-spam law and Virginia’s long-arm statute that allows Virginia courts to exercise jurisdiction over out-ofState spammers. 

Although the laws were somewhat effective, we recognized the 

growing need to toughen Virginia’s computer crime laws in relation 

to the transmission of spam. We found that spammers were paying 

the civil damages or mere criminal fines assessed against them but 

were continuing with their destructive behavior. They chalked it up 

to the cost of doing business. The threat of civil lawsuits and misdemeanor convictions was not enough. 

In our pursuit, we also examined the labeling laws many other 

States have enacted. Most of these laws require spammers to identify e-mail messages as containing advertisements, ADV, or adult 

material, ADT. These laws have shown to be somewhat ineffective 

as well in that they are based on the false premise that spammers 

are law-abiding advertisers. 

After spending a great deal of work over the summer of 2002 

working with both consumers and the Virginia Internet Service 

Providers Alliance, we were able to come up with legislation that 

punished spammers as felons when they employed such fraudulent 

means as forging and falsifying routing information. I am grateful 

that the Virginia General Assembly passed this important antispam legislation. 

8

We give new provisions in the criminal code of Virginia which 

prohibits the forging or falsification of e-mail transmission and that 

is not unlike the Federal legislation that is before you. I am 

pleased that so many of our concerns and the concerns of my fellow 

attorneys general have been taken into account in this proposed 

Federal statute and preemption is no longer a concern and that you 

will no longer preempt State attorneys general and State general 

assemblies from passing tough laws against spam. 

The majority of spam is transmitted using fraudulent means so 

that the recipient cannot determine where it came from and cannot 

ask to be removed from this mailing list. They sometimes also use 

special software that protects them from being tracked. Our law 

ensures that those spammers that joyride on accounts that don’t 

belong to them will be held accountable for those acts. These tougher criminal penalties will serve as a deterrent to many spammers 

who considered the civil damages of the past a cost of doing business. 

There are many conditions to charging felonies in Virginia, and 

those are included in Virginia’s act, and they are included in my 

written testimony. 

This new anti-spam law also includes new sections which provides for asset seizure and forfeiture for all monies and other income and proceeds earned as a result of the violation of this law 

and all computer equipment, all the software and personal property 

used in connection with this spamming operation. 

Our new law went into effect just 7 days ago, on July 1; and my 

new Computer Crime Unit has already begun working with consumers and ISPs to investigate those who are violating Virginia’s 

laws. 

Thank you for allowing me to be with you this morning. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kilgore follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JERRY W. KILGORE

Mr. Chairman and members of this distinguished committee, I am Jerry Kilgore, 

Attorney General of Virginia. Virginia is the Internet Capital of the World. More 

than half of all Internet traffic in the world runs through Virginia, and more than 

half of all Internet access to business and individuals is provided by Virginia companies. As you consider federal anti-Spam legislation, HR 2214, I am pleased to be 

able to address your committee today on Virginia’s Anti-SPAM law that went into 

effect seven days ago. 

It was not too long ago that no one had ever heard of e-mail. But now, who among 

us can live without it? Anyone who has e-mail certainly knows about SPAM. It is 

that frustrating, unwanted e-mail that shows up every day by the dozens . . . or 

hundreds . . . in your computer’s in-box. 

The proliferation of SPAM has become increasingly frustrating to both users of 

the Internet and Internet Service Providers, also known as ISP’s. SPAM is technically defined as unsolicited bulk email, ‘‘UBE,’’ or unsolicited commercial email, 

‘‘UCE.’’ SPAM aggravates the average user and it costs businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue. Virginia is home to many Internet Service Providers. Each day, 

these ISP’s are forced to use expensive technology and commit countless manpower 

hours to combat the millions of pieces of SPAM that are transmitted through their 

servers. This SPAM is not only annoying but often also obscene. SPAM has a direct, 

negative impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the free enterprise system and 

day-to-day operations of business. 

We live in a world that relies more and more on technology. In my office, we rely 

on technology a great deal—especially where time-sensitive information is of concern. But SPAM can throw a wrench into receiving this information. Even if I have 

9

my Blackberry with me, SPAM makes the transmission cumbersome for the ISP— thereby slowing down the transmittal rate. 

Billions of pieces of bulk e-mail are sent each second of the day. While the Internet and technology are meant to improve the quality of our lives—many hours of 

stress are expended because of this problem. Deals can be lost and even jobs are 

lost because smaller ISPs can’t survive the toll SPAM exacts. 

Virginia has had laws that attempted to deal with the growing problem of SPAM 

since 1999. The Virginia legislature amended the statutes defining crimes such as 

‘‘Computer Fraud,’’ ‘‘Computer Trespass,’’ and ‘‘Theft of Computer Services’’ in recent years. These revisions attempted to cover the sending of unsolicited bulk email, 

and created a civil relief section that gave both consumers and the ISP’s the right 

to sue the Spammers for actual or statutory damages. These laws have been effectively used by the Internet Service Providers to sue Spammers from all over the 

country for violations. In fact my office has twice successfully defended the constitutionality of Virginia’s anti-SPAM laws and Virginia’s long-arm statute that allows 

Virginia courts to exercise jurisdiction over out-of-state Spammers. 

Although the laws that were in place had been somewhat effective, my office recognized the growing need to toughen Virginia’s computer crime laws in reference to 

the transmission of SPAM. We found that Spammers were paying the civil damages, 

or mere criminal fines assessed against them, but were continuing their destructive 

behavior. They chalked up those damages or fines as a cost of doing business. The 

threat of civil lawsuits or misdemeanor convictions was not enough to deter them. 

In our pursuit to further combat the problem of SPAM, my office studied the ‘‘labeling laws’’ many other states had enacted. Most of these laws require Spammers 

to identify the e-mail messages as containing advertisements, ‘‘ADV,’’ or adult material, ‘‘ADT.’’ These laws have been shown to be somewhat ineffective in that they 

are based on the false premise that most Spammers are merely law-abiding advertisers. 

After spending a great deal of the summer of 2002 working with both consumers 

and the Virginia Internet Service Providers Alliance, which represents all of the 

ISP’s located within Virginia, I sponsored legislation that would punish Spammers 

as felons when they employed such fraudulent means as forging and falsifying routing information. I am grateful that in this past session of Virginia’s General Assembly, my ANTI-SPAM legislation was adopted. 

The law, which has been touted as the toughest in the nation, provides a new separate provision in the criminal code of Virginia, which prohibits the forging or falsification of e-mail transmission information used to facilitate the sending of SPAM. 

This is not unlike the federal legislation before you. I am pleased that some of my 

concerns, along with many other Attorneys General, about the proposed federal statute’s preemption of Virginia’s criminal statute relating to SPAM have been addressed. The majority of SPAM is transmitted using fraudulent means so that the 

recipient cannot determine the sender or ask to be removed from the mailing list. 

Spammers often use special software designed to protect them from being tracked. 

Our law ensures that the Spammer who joyrides on accounts that do not belong to 

him will be held accountable for that act. In fact, such a Spammer can now be punished as a felon when he uses such fraudulent means to send SPAM. This tougher 

criminal penalty will serve as a deterrent to many Spammers who consider the civil 

damages that they have been ordered to pay as a mere cost of doing business. 

There are three conditions, which raise the violation of sending SPAM using 

fraudulent means to a felony. The conditions are triggered when the volume of 

SPAM transmitted exceeds 10,000 attempted recipients in any 24-hour period, 

100,000 attempted recipients in any 30-day time period, or one million attempted 

recipients in any one-year time period; or when the revenue generated from a specific SPAM transmission exceeds $1,000 or the total revenue generated from all 

SPAM transmitted to any ISP exceeds $50,000; or if the Spammer knowingly hires, 

employs, uses, or permits any minor to assist in the transmission of the SPAM. 

Another first in the nation in computer crime law was enacted with our new provision concerning fraudulent SPAM containing obscenity. It will also now be a violation of our Virginia Computer Crimes Act for Spammer to use a computer in 

spamming operations in connection with a violation of obscenity laws. An initial offense of this nature is a Class 1 Misdemeanor and a second offense is now a Class 

6 Felony. 

The new anti-SPAM law also includes a new section which provides for the seizure and forfeiture of all moneys and other income and proceeds earned as a result 

of violations of the law, and all computer equipment, all computer software, and all 

personal property used in connection with any violation of the law. 

Our new law went into effect just seven days ago, on July 1st and my Computer 

Crime Unit has already begun to work with consumers and the ISP’s to investigate 

10

and prosecute violations. In fact, this new anti-SPAM law is one of many computer 

laws that my office has been authorized by the legislature to prosecute. I am certain 

that our law will benefit every Virginia resident who uses the Internet and has an 

e-mail account, and many Americans who benefit from Virginia’s technology crescent. 

Thank you very much and I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

11

ATTACHMENT


KilgoreA.eps
12


KilgoreB.eps
13

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Moschella. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE WILLIAM MOSCHELLA, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Scott and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to testify 

today about the Justice Department’s views on H.R. 2214. 

Like you, the Department has received an increasing number of 

letters and calls from citizens complaining about the number of unsolicited electronic mail appearing in their mailboxes and the potentially fraudulent, dangerous or obscene content of those electronic mails. We have been in discussions with Internet Service 

Providers who tell us that the amount of spam they are handling 

continues to increase. We are hearing clearly that people simply 

are fed up with the unwanted mail offering pornography, untested 

medications and shady financial deals clogging their inboxes. 

When consumers throw up their hands at their electronic mailbox and when providers pass increased costs of spam onto their 

customers, the benefits of electronic commerce facilitated by the 

Internet will diminish. This would be unacceptable. 

At the same time, Congress must be careful about adopting too 

much regulation in this area or instituting an inflexible regime 

which could threaten the openness and success of the Internet. Our 

policy toward the Internet from its significant commercialization in 

the early 1990’s has been to encourage electronic commerce to grow 

in accord with the Internet’s open architecture and have preferred 

technology-based and market-driven solutions. Accordingly, we support efforts that will target the problem of unsolicited commercial 

e-mail, particularly e-mail designed to facilitate consumer fraud or 

unwanted transmission of pornography while not harming legitimate marketers sending electronic mail that a customer wants to 

read. We encourage the Subcommittee and Congress as a whole to 

pursue these goals when drafting legislation in this area. 

While we believe that the Department of Justice can play a supporting role in addressing the spam problem, we of course do not 

believe that the problem can be adequately addressed by a single 

approach or single agency. Indeed, it is not a problem Government 

can be expected to solve by itself. We believe strongly that criminal 

prosecution will be a very small part of a larger cooperative initiative. It is a backstop to the civil, administrative and market-based 

remedies that form a larger part of the solution. The role of the 

criminal justice system in addressing this problem should be appropriately limited to those offenders who are affirmatively hiding 

their identities and who are sending out unsolicited e-mail with unmarked sexually explicit content. Moreover, our prosecutions 

should focus on the most egregious violators who are involved in 

sending thousands of spam messages every day. 

The Justice Department believes that it can play an important 

part in this broad response to the problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail. We believe that criminal sanctions are appropriate 

when a marketer has knowingly lied about his or her identity when 

sending out such e-mail. Spammers don’t want to put true identifying information on its commercial mail because they don’t want 

14

to have their mail filtered, hear from irate recipients or lose their 

connection to their Internet because they have violated their contract with their provider. At worst, these marketers do not want to 

be contacted because they are actively engaging in fraud by advertising illegal items or schemes and want to hide from investigators 

and victims. 

We believe that deterring the knowing use of fraudulent identifying information will assist both users and Internet Service Providers in fighting spam. With accurate identifying information, 

users can contact marketers to tell them that they no longer wish 

to receive the spam and they can tell whether those requests are 

being honored. Similarly, with accurate identifying information, 

providers can better identify and, when appropriate, filter traffic 

from persons who are crippling their networks or generating hundreds or thousands of complaints due to spam. 

In fact, in testimony on May 21 of this year before the Senate 

Commerce Committee, Ronald Scelson, a self-proclaimed spammer 

who claimed responsibility for sending approximately 180 million 

spam e-mails per day, indicated that he intentionally forged headers precisely so that he would avoid being shut down by his service 

provider due to customer complaints. Creating a criminal offense to 

address the worst behavior will allow law enforcement in appropriate cases to work with providers to identify those responsible for 

this sort of activity and subject them to prosecution. 

Similarly, we believe we can assist in deterring one of the most 

common and significant complaints about spam—people receiving 

unsolicited messages containing sexually oriented contact. Requiring marking of that sexually explicit content in unsolicited mail 

and enforcing that requirement with a criminal deterrent can help 

individuals and parents filter out electronic mail they are likely to 

find particularly offensive. 

Mr. Chairman, the Department supports H.R. 2214’s general approach to criminal penalties. We believe that criminalizing this 

egregious conduct that I discussed at the felony level is appropriate 

for several reasons. 

First, it will help to ensure these cases will be investigated and 

prosecuted in the field as investigators and prosecutors simply lack 

resources or the incentives to spend weeks tracking down a 

spammer for a misdemeanor offense. 

Second, it will provide prosecutors with the necessary tools to investigate these cases, as some Federal investigative tools are reserved solely for felony offenses. 

Third, it places the United States in a position of being able to 

seek and receive international assistance in this area in the future 

as international treaties, law and practice often restricts certain 

types of assistance to cases in which both countries criminalize the 

conduct at the felony level. 

Mr. Chairman, my written statement contains some specific suggestions for the criminal provisions which I will be happy to discuss; and I appreciate the opportunity to testify. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Moschella. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moschella follows:]

15

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM E. MOSCHELLA

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is William Moschella and 

I am the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of 

Justice. I thank the Subcommittee for holding this hearing on H.R. 2214, the ‘‘Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act’’ or ‘‘RID SPAM Act’’. I commend Chairman 

Sensenbrenner, Chairman Tauzin, Representative Burr, and all of the other co-sponsors of the legislation for taking steps to address this issue, and I am pleased to 

be able to discuss the Justice Department’s views on that bill with you today. 

I. A FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING THE SPAM PROBLEM

Over the last few years, the Department has received an increasing number of 

letters and calls from citizens complaining about the amount of unsolicited electronic mail appearing in their mailboxes and the potentially fraudulent, dangerous, 

or obscene content of those electronic mails. We have been in discussions with Internet service providers who tell us that the amount of spam they are handling continues to increase—often doubling or tripling in a matter of months. We are hearing 

clearly that people simply do not want to wade through unwanted e-mail offering 

pornography, untested medications, and shady financial deals to hear news from 

their daughter in college, find out that their order has been shipped from an e-commerce site, or receive offers that they have sought from legitimate marketers. 

This is a key element of the problem that we are discussing today—spam deters 

electronic commerce and communication because it makes consumers less likely and 

less able to use the Internet for legitimate business. People stop signing up for offers 

and mailings from legitimate merchants because they fear that their e-mail address 

will be sold or stolen and instead of getting useful information that they want—like 

movie times in their community or last-minute airfare deals from an airline—they’ll 

get unwanted pitches from spam marketers. When consumers throw up their hands 

at their electronic mailbox and when providers are forced to pass increased costs 

of spam filtering on to their customers because they are taking in more unwanted 

spam than legitimate mail, the benefits of electronic commerce facilitated by the 

Internet will diminish. This would be unacceptable. 

At the same time, adopting too much regulation in this area or instituting an inflexible regime regulating all commercial electronic mail also threatens the openness 

and success of the Internet. Our policy toward the Internet from its first significant 

commercialization in the early 1990s has been to favor solutions that do not restrict 

progress with overbroad regulation. Thus far, we have encouraged electronic commerce to grow in accord with the Internet’s open architecture and have preferred 

technology-based and market-driven solutions. This policy has served us well to this 

point and we do not advocate changing that formula. Instead, we support efforts 

that will target the problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail, particularly e-mail designed to facilitate consumer fraud or unwanted transmission of pornography, while 

not harming legitimate marketers sending electronic mail that their customers want 

to read. We encourage the Subcommittee and Congress as a whole to pursue these 

goals when crafting legislation in this area. 

II. THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S COMMITMENT TO HELPING FIGHT THE SPAM PROBLEM

While we believe that the Department of Justice can play a supporting role in addressing the spam problem, we of course do not believe that the problem can be adequately addressed by any single approach or any single agency. Indeed, it is not a 

problem that government can be expected to solve by itself. We believe strongly that 

criminal prosecution will be a very small part of a larger cooperative initiative; it 

is a backstop for the civil, administrative, and market-based remedies that form a 

larger part of the regime. The role of the criminal justice system in addressing this 

problem should be appropriately limited to those offenders who are affirmatively 

hiding their identities or who are sending out unsolicited e-mail with unmarked sexually explicit content. Moreover, our prosecutions should focus on the most egregious violators who are involved in sending thousands of spam messages every day. 

In keeping with the balanced framework that we recommend for addressing the 

overall issue, the powerful deterrence of criminal law neither should interfere with 

the dynamic growth of the Internet and electronic commerce nor should it chill legitimate speech. 

Moreover, the Government’s efforts to combat unlawful spam will require continued and increased cooperation with users and network providers. It will also require 

approaching other countries for assistance, because even though we believe that a 

large percentage of spam begins in the United States and is targeted at the United 

16

1We understand from our discussions with industry that spammers seek out mail servers and 

other Internet hosts running software that permits that host to be an unwitting third-party 

relay between the spammer and the mail server of the recipient. In some cases, the relay server 

is running old mail server software with settings permitting such relaying, although most modern mail software does not permit such relaying by default. Spammers trade information about 

these servers, known as ‘‘open mail relays,’’ and exploit them as a mail delivery mechanism. 

In other cases, the relay is a computer running proxy software. Such proxy software is often 

installed on home or business computers by a trojan horse program, a computer virus, or a network worm, without the knowledge of that computer’s owner. 

States, spammers often route their spam through other countries in order to further 

hide their tracks. Spam will not be stopped by law alone, but by a combination of 

solutions: Criminal prosecution for the very worst offenders; civil and administrative 

remedies against those who cause harm by failing to follow the rules of the road 

for e-mail marketing; continued technological development to assist network providers and users in filtering their mail; and continued consumer awareness and vigilance about how to protect themselves online. 

The Justice Department believes that it can play an important part in a broad 

response to the problem of unsolicited electronic mail messages. We believe that 

criminal sanctions are appropriate where a marketer has knowingly lied about his 

or her identity when sending out commercial electronic mail. As frustrating as all 

unwanted commercial electronic mail can be, it is even more frustrating for recipients when they cannot find the individual or company responsible for the mail to 

tell them that it is unwanted, because that spammer has used a screen of deception 

to hide the true source of the electronic mail. Why do some spammers do this? Why 

do they hide behind false e-mail addresses, relay their mail traffic through one or 

more misconfigured Internet hosts 1 to hide the true source of the mail, and place 

other obstacles in the way of those who wish to contact them? Our discussions with 

industry indicate that one answer is that a number of these spammers are not 

proud about what they are doing. At best, they do not want to put true identifying 

information on this commercial mail because they do not want to have their mail 

filtered, hear from recipients that they do not wish to receive such mail, or lose their 

connection to the Internet because they have violated their contract with their provider. At worst, these marketers do not want to be contacted because they are actively engaging in fraud by advertising illegal items or schemes, and want to hide 

from investigators and victims. In some cases, the lie itself creates additional victims, when unscrupulous spammers misappropriate the e-mail address of an innocent user to send out their spam—resulting in the innocent user receiving thousands of responses and complaints from recipients who have been deceived to believe that the innocent mailbox owner was responsible for this spam, often rendering the account of the innocent victim useless. 

We believe that deterring the knowing use of fraudulent identifying information 

will assist both users and Internet service providers in fighting unsolicited commercial electronic mail. With accurate identifying information, users can contact marketers to tell them that they no longer wish to receive electronic mail, and can tell 

whether those requests are being honored. Similarly, with accurate identifying information, providers can better identify and, when appropriate, filter traffic from 

persons who are crippling their network or generating hundreds or thousands of 

complaints due to unsolicited electronic mail. In fact, in testimony given on May 

21st of this year before the Senate Commerce Committee, Ronald Scelson, a selfproclaimed spammer who claimed responsibility for sending approximately 180 million spam e-mail messages per day, indicated that he intentionally forged headers 

precisely so that he would avoid being shut down by his service provider due to customer complaints. Creating a criminal offense to address the worst behavior will 

allow law enforcement, in appropriate cases, to work with providers to identify persons responsible for this sort of activity and subject them to prosecution. 

Similarly, we believe that we can assist in deterring one of the most common and 

significant complaints about spam—people receiving unsolicited messages containing sexually oriented content. Requiring marking of that sexually explicit content in unsolicited mail and enforcing that requirement with a criminal deterrent 

can help individuals and parents to filter out electronic mail that they are likely 

to find particularly offensive. 

III. THE DEPARTMENT’S COMMENTS ON TITLE II OF H.R. 2214

We note that H.R. 2214 attempts to addresses the spam problem with a balanced 

combination of administrative, civil, and criminal tools. Title I of the bill sets out 

minimal requirements for commercial electronic mail messages to assist consumers 

and providers in locating marketers to tell them when their solicitations are unVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Sep 10, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\WORK\CRIME\070803\88203.000 HJUD1 PsN: 88203
17

wanted and to require marketers to respect those requests when they receive them. 

It also provides for civil enforcement of these ‘‘rules of the road’’ by the Federal 

Trade Commission, State attorneys general, and Internet service providers. Title II 

of the bill, which is the focus of my testimony today, creates new criminal penalties 

for falsifying the sender’s identity in commercial electronic mail, for sending unsolicited commercial electronic mail containing sexually-oriented material without identifying it as such, and for using automated processes to collect thousands of electronic 

mail addresses from web sites, chat rooms, and bulletin boards. Finally, Title III 

supplements and supports the previous two titles, requiring Federal Trade Commission regulations to implement the administrative provisions and reports to Congress 

on the effectiveness of various techniques for stopping spam. The Justice Department believes that legislation such as this will help to alleviate the burdens placed 

on network providers and consumers from the daily onslaught of pitches, fraudulent 

schemes, and pornography in electronic mail. We believe that this, in turn, will 

make consumers more likely to use the Internet to purchase goods and services, and 

help further fulfill the Internet’s potential. 

In particular, we support the bill’s approach to criminalizing the knowing falsification of the identity of the sender. Our conversations with industry have indicated that senders of unsolicited commercial electronic mail are very good at evading filters and rules of all types. Spammers can tell when their electronic mail is 

being blocked and they react quickly—often finding ways around the filters within 

hours or minutes. By criminalizing the knowing falsification of the sender’s identity 

and giving non-exhaustive examples of the means by which they currently do this, 

we believe that the statute would keep better pace with new and inventive ways 

spammers will undoubtedly develop to knowingly falsify their identities. 

The Justice Department also supports making it criminal offense to send unsolicited commercial electronic mail containing sexually explicit content without marking 

it as such. As I indicated before, this is a frequent complaint that the Department 

receives—both from individuals who discover that their electronic mail address is 

now the target of multiple unsolicited pornographic e-mail messages each day and 

from parents who discover that their child has received unsolicited e-mail that contains explicit content. We believe that requiring appropriate marking for sexually 

explicit, unsolicited electronic mail will assist parents and individuals in filtering 

out sexually explicit e-mail that they do not wish to receive and assist parents in 

protecting their children from receiving such e-mail. 

We support H.R. 2214’s general approach to criminal penalties. We believe that 

criminalizing particularly egregious conduct at the felony level is appropriate for 

several reasons. First, it will help to ensure that these cases will be investigated 

and prosecuted in the field, as investigators and prosecutors simply lack resources 

or the incentive to spend weeks tracking down a spammer for a misdemeanor offense. Second, it will provide prosecutors with the necessary tools to investigate 

these cases, as some Federal investigative tools are reserved solely for felony offenses. Third, it places the United States in a position of being able to seek and receive international assistance in this area in the future, as international treaties, 

law, and practice often restrict certain types of assistance to cases in which both 

countries criminalize the conduct at the felony level. 

At the same time, however, we are concerned about using a felony threshold that 

relies on the number of prohibited e-mail messages sent. In order to establish a felony for a first-time offender under the bill, a prosecutor would have to prove beyond 

a reasonable doubt that the sender knew that he falsified his identity in each of 

10,000 commercial electronic mail messages or that each of 10,000 messages containing unmarked sexually explicit conduct were truly unsolicited by all recipients. 

The prosecutors in the Criminal Division tell me that these thresholds would make 

these felonies extremely difficult to prosecute because they would have to accumulate a massive documentary case just to meet the felony definition. This, in turn, 

could require expenditures of resources that simply are not available, given the Department’s other key priorities. Even in the cases that the Department envisions 

prosecuting—people responsible for hundreds of thousands or millions of messages 

per day with falsified headers or unmarked pornography—the burden of collecting, 

authenticating, and proving beyond a reasonable doubt that each such message was 

sent with the necessary intent and falsification could essentially render the crime 

unprovable. 

While the Department understands the desire to set thresholds to guide the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, we strongly suggest that the Subcommittee consider 

other triggers for felony treatment. We note that S. 1293, recently introduced by 

Senators Hatch, Leahy, and Schumer, adopts other elements for felony treatment, 

including that the offense be committed in furtherance of another Federal or State 

felony, that the offense cause loss aggregating $5,000 or more within one year, or 

18

the individual committing the offense obtained things of value as a result of the offense aggregating $5,000 or more within a year. These and other alternatives would 

permit felony punishment for appropriately egregious offenders without imposing an 

effectively insurmountable burden of proof upon the government. 

We do have some more specific concerns about particular aspects of title II of the 

bill. I discuss five of them below and offer additional technical suggestions as well. 

First, in proposed section 622 of title 18, which is one of the criminal sections that 

would be added by section 201 of the bill, we suggest a wording change. Section 622 

would establish a crime for intentionally sending a commercial electronic mail message that the sender knows falsifies the identity of the sender. In order to ensure 

that this section is fully able to withstand a First Amendment challenge that the 

section is over-broad, in that it could be read to cover messages that are accompanied by header information that is false or misleading in immaterial ways, this 

section should be clarified to apply to ‘‘materially’’ false or misleading information. 

Second, proposed section 622 of title 18 would also prohibit registering for multiple e-mail accounts or domain names using information that falsifies the identity 

of the registrant, and then sending messages from those accounts without providing 

the identity and current contact information of the sender. The Department recommends greater specificity in the definition of ‘‘current contact information’’ of the 

sender. We are concerned that a defendant might contend that a website address 

contained within the electronic mail or another bogus electronic mail address in the 

body of the message is sufficient to meet this undefined term. We suggest including 

a definition that specifies that ‘‘contact information’’ includes, at a minimum, a valid 

postal address and working telephone number for the sender. 

Third, proposed section 623 of title 18 would prohibit sending unsolicited commercial electronic mail containing sexually oriented material without proper marking. 

We would also suggest a wording change to this section to harmonize the first two 

subsections and to reduce the risk of a successful constitutional challenge to the section. In subsection (a), the criminal prohibition covers ‘‘unsolicited commercial electronic mail that includes sexually oriented material,’’ while in subsection (b), the 

FTC is required to prescribe marks and notices to be included in or associated with 

‘‘unsolicited electronic mail that contains a sexually oriented advertisement.’’ The 

Justice Department believes that harmonizing both subsections by using the formulation in subsection (a) will help avoid confusion and challenges based upon the distinction in wording between the two sections. 

Fourth, proposed section 625 of title 18 would prohibit a person from ‘‘harvesting’’

electronic mail addresses from an Internet website operated by another person and 

using those addresses in another violation of the chapter. It appears to the Department that harvesting alone, without accompanying unlawful spamming activity, is 

insufficient to justify criminal punishment. Accordingly, because a defendant must 

be proven to have committed a violation of section 622 or 623 to trigger this section 

at all, and since both section 622 and 623 are punishable at least as misdemeanors, 

it is difficult to conceive the circumstances under which this harvesting provision 

would be utilized by Federal prosecutors. Accordingly, we do not support a separate 

criminal offense for ‘‘harvesting.’’ We believe that the heart of this bill and the narrow role for criminal prosecution should be focused on those who send messages 

that lack truthful identifying information or appropriate markings denoting sexually 

explicit content. We believe that harvesting should be an aggravating factor at sentencing and we recommend that this separate harvesting offense be removed from 

the draft legislation. The Department would be willing to work with Congress to 

craft an appropriate directive to the United States Sentencing Commission to address this issue. 

Finally, title II creates separate civil actions for conduct related to unsolicited 

commercial electronic mail from those created in title I of this bill. These civil 

causes of action created by proposed section 626 of title 18 of the United States Code 

are similar to those created in title I of the bill; accordingly, the civil provisions in 

the two titles overlap in significant ways. The Department is concerned that the 

civil actions could be construed to nullify one another, as both titles include a provision stating that it provides the exclusive civil remedies for violations. Accordingly, 

we recommend to the committee that it re-examine the relationship between title 

I and title II of the bill and consider centralizing the civil causes of action in title 

I, while leaving title II to focus exclusively upon criminal offenses and penalties. 

IV. ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL SUGGESTIONS

We have some additional technical suggestions related to the definitions section 

of the bill that we would recommend to the committee. 

19

First, paragraphs (2) (‘‘commercial electronic mail message’’) and (4) (‘‘consent’’) 

duplicate terms already defined in title II of the bill, except that they change the 

definition slightly from the definition in title II. While it is understandable that the 

drafters would wish title II to be able to stand on its own, subtle changes in the 

definitions of identical terms within the same bill promote confusion and could lead 

to litigation over the meaning of these key terms. We suggest that, if identical terms 

are used in different sections of the bill, they be defined identically, as is the case 

with paragraph (9) (‘‘header information’’) and paragraph (16) (‘‘unsolicited commercial electronic mail message’’). 

Second, paragraph (5) defines ‘‘covered computer,’’ used in title II of the bill, but 

only in the substantive provisions. Title II’s definitional section uses the term ‘‘protected computer,’’ which then is not used in the substantive section. These uses 

should be consistent. We recommend using the single term ‘‘covered computer.’’

Third, to the extent that the definitions contained within title II should stand on 

their own, the definition of ‘‘electronic mail message’’ from section 304 should be 

similarly included in title II, since it is important in interpreting that title. 

On the whole, however, I want to stress that the Department supports the general 

approach of the criminal provisions in title II of H.R. 2214 and we believe that the 

issues I have raised can be resolved through the legislative process. We look forward 

to continuing to work with the Subcommittee on this important issue. 

V. CONCLUSION

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement. I would like to thank you 

and the Subcommittee again for soliciting the Justice Department’s views on this 

issue and for allowing me to express them through my testimony here today. I 

would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Rubin. 

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH S. RUBIN, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AND CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY AND E-COMMERCE, UNITED STATES 

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 

Mr. RUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Scott, Members of the 

Subcommittee, for this opportunity to testify this morning. 

My name is Joe Rubin. I am the Executive Director of Technology and E-commerce and Senior Director of Congressional and 

Public Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce serves as the principal voice for 

the American business community here in the U.S. And abroad. 

Specifically, the Chamber represents the world’s largest business 

federation, representing more than 3 million businesses of every 

size, sector and region of the country, including ISPs, retailers, employers, marketers and their customers, all who have a keen interest in stopping spam. 

The RID Spam Act is balanced, effective legislation that will help 

play a significant role in reducing the amount of spam that consumers receive in their inboxes. The Chamber is pleased to support 

your efforts to pass this legislation expeditiously. 

The U.S. Has the largest and most dynamic economy in the 

world, particularly when it comes to consumer choice and control. 

At no other time in history have consumers been in such control 

over their economic domain; and e-commerce plays a critical role in 

that empowerment, giving consumers the power to comparison 

shop with little or no cost and forcing businesses to respond instantly to changes in consumer demand. No longer is the consumer 

bound by geographic location, but here he or she can in a nanosecond travel anywhere in the world to purchase products and 

services that they want with just the click of the mouse. 

20

However, the challenge of spam threatens to destroy many of the 

benefits of our e-commerce system. The proliferation of bulk, unsolicited, commercial e-mail has become more than a nuisance. Increasingly, consumers are getting inundated with pornographic or 

false and misleading e-mail that overshadows the online communication efforts of legitimate companies. 

It has to be understood, however, that there is a clear distinction 

between legitimate companies and those who attempt to use fraud 

and deception to rip off consumers, to force them to open their emails, to avoid ISP filters and to rip off consumers. This distinction 

has to be clearly recognized in any legislative attempts to address 

spam. Legitimate companies will comply with the rules, even if 

they are extremely burdensome and unworkable, while spammers 

will continue to ignore legislative and judicial rules and edicts. 

Therefore, the rules must be carefully considered and carefully balanced so as not to intentionally restrict the ability of legitimate 

companies to communicate effectively with their customers or inadvertently provide an unfair advantage to those who ignore the rules 

of the road. 

There is no magic bullet in the quest to stop spam. Any successful effort will require several critical parts, including technology, 

market-based solutions, cooperation between businesses and between business and Government, increased FTC enforcement, enhanced ability of ISPs to go after bad actors, consumer education 

and responsibility, increased and enhanced law enforcement and a 

strong uniform Federal legislative standard. 

This legislation represents a critical and effective piece of this 

puzzle to combat spam, but it does so in a narrowly targeted way 

that focuses on combating the clear abuses while protecting the 

continued legitimate use of e-mail. It also eliminates many of the 

mistakes that have been made in previous efforts to stop spam, 

such as granting private rights of action for consumers or requiring 

labels for commercial e-mail. In particular, this legislation provides 

the FTC with strong enforcement tools, enhances the ability of 

ISPs to sue spammers, draws an appropriate balance between 

State and Federal enforcement standards and jurisdiction and institutes a single nationwide standard to facilitate these efforts. 

In addition, the RID Spam Act also provides for criminal enforcement and criminal penalties in some cases when the activities of 

spammers are so egregious and harmful that they rise to the level 

of a potential criminal offense; and we believe that these criminal 

provisions are carefully and narrowly drawn to target truly egregious and intentional behavior and will provide an effective backstop and supplement to other remedies provided to stop these 

criminals. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding 

this important issue. As I said, the RID Spam Act is balanced, effective legislation that will have a serious impact on the amount 

of spam, without adversely affecting the ability of legitimate companies to communicate with their customers. 

I have included more specific recommendations in my written 

testimony. I look forward to working with you as this legislation 

moves to the floor, and I am happy to answer any questions. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Rubin. 

21

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rubin follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOSEPH S. RUBIN

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Scott, and Members of the Subcommittee, my 

name is Joseph Rubin, and I am the Senior Director of Congressional and Public 

Affairs and Executive Director of Technology and e-Commerce for the U.S. Chamber 

of Commerce (Chamber). I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you this 

morning to discuss H.R. 2214, the Reduction in Distribution (RID) Spam Act of 

2003. 

The U.S. Chamber serves as the principal voice of the American business community here in the U.S. and around the world. Specifically, the Chamber is the world’s largest business federation, representing more than three million businesses of 

every size, sector and region of the country. On behalf of the business community, 

therefore, let me thank you for your leadership in dealing with this issue, and in 

holding this timely and important hearing and moving this legislation. 

The RID Spam Act is balanced, effective legislation that will play a significant 

role in reducing the amount of spam. The Chamber is pleased to support your efforts to pass this legislation expeditiously. 

The U.S. has the largest and most dynamic economy in the world, particularly 

when it comes to consumer choice and control. At no other time in history have consumers been in such control over their economic domain. For example, e-commerce 

gives consumers the power to comparison shop with little or no cost, forcing business to respond instantly to changes in consumer demand. Businesses understand 

all too well that if they are not satisfying customer demands, other businesses will. 

No longer is a customer bound by geographic location to a business, but in a nanosecond can travel anywhere in the world to purchase products and services that 

they want with just a click of the mouse. 

However, the challenge of spam threatens to destroy many of the benefits of our 

e-commerce system. The proliferation of bulk, unsolicited, commercial email, commonly referred to as ‘‘spam,’’ has become more than a nuisance. Increasingly, consumers are getting inundated with pornographic or false and misleading email that 

diminishes their faith in e-commerce, undermining many of the benefits that consumers derive from e-commerce. 

It also has to be understood that there is a clear distinction between legitimate 

companies, those that do not spoof or mislead their customers, respect and honor 

opt-outs, seek to gain repeat customers, and who obtain email addresses through legitimate means, versus those who attempt to use fraud and deception to get consumers to open their emails or avoid Internet Service Provider (ISP) filters and obtain customer ‘‘leads’’ by, in effect, stealing addresses from other online service providers. This distinction has to be clearly recognized in any legislative attempts to 

address spam—legitimate companies will comply with the rules, even if they are extremely burdensome and unworkable, while spammers will continue to ignore legislative and judicial rules and edicts. Therefore, the rules must be carefully considered and balanced, so as not to unintentionally restrict the ability of legitimate companies to communicate effectively with their customers. 

The amount of spam is growing exponentially, and imposes real costs on consumers, ISP businesses, and the economy generally. For example, Forrester Research estimates the cost of spam to the business community alone could be as high 

as $10 billion annually. 

Spam imposes significant costs on consumers. Not only do consumers waste valuable time deleting unwanted email, but they are also subject to a bombardment of 

pornographic as well as false and misleading email. The Federal Trade Commission 

(FTC) estimates that 66 percent of spam contains at least some form of deception, 

and confirms that fraudulent operators have been among the first to use email to 

expand their reach in seeking to exploit the vulnerable and uneducated. 

ISPs also suffer real losses as a result of spam. The sheer volume of spam, for 

example, forces them to divert valuable resources into creating additional bandwidth to carry unwanted messages to their customers. ISPs also invest millions of 

dollars in technology to stop spam. However, they ironically bear the brunt of customer frustration, as they are often the recipient of consumer complaints about 

spam. On the other hand, while ISPs have carefully crafted agreements with their 

users to enable them to block accounts that are used for spam, they are increasingly 

finding themselves the defendant in suits brought by account holders whose accounts were blocked for allegedly sending spam. 

Retailers, marketers, financial services companies, travel providers, and other 

businesses that communicate with their customers via email also face serious challenges and expenses as a result of spam. For example, companies must ensure that 

22

their communications actually get to their customers, and then need to make sure 

that their legitimate communications are not deleted along with the spam and pornography that clog their users’ email boxes. 

Finally, employers are also growing increasingly concerned about the spread of 

spam. For example, even though it may take less than a second to delete an unwanted email, employers have growing concerns about lost productivity, as more 

time at the office is spent deleting unwanted spam. They are also concerned about 

the contents of the spam, including the threat of viruses and trojan horses contained 

in spam, as well as the potential for sexual harassment and other types of suits that 

offensive email may create. Also, because the sending of spam often uses spoofing, 

illegitimately using a well-known company’s name and/or email address to avoid 

blocking and to entice end-users to open their email, companies are increasingly 

worried about the tremendous harm that a spammer could cause to a well-known 

brand. 

To respond to the challenge of spam, government at all levels; consumers, ISPs, 

retailers and the experts across the political spectrum have all been working diligently to find a solution to the spam problem. While the success to date is impressive, the amount of spam continues to increase. The range of responses includes:

• ISPs have been on the forefront in their response to spam. First, they have 

invested millions of dollars in new and better technologies to block spam, and 

their success rates are significant—blocking billions of unwanted emails a 

day. ISPs have also filed lawsuits against dozens of companies and individuals who send out billions of spam emails a day, and have recovered millions 

of dollars in monetary penalties against these spammers. They are also forging alliances with other ISPs to combat spam, seeking to develop open technical standards and industry guidelines that will help fight spam, as well as 

discussing ways to better cooperate with law enforcement to stop large-scale 

spammers. Nonetheless, in spite of these efforts, the spam problem keeps increasing;

• The FTC Commission has sued spammers for sending false and misleading 

email, and has led the effort to educate consumers about the tools that they 

can use and simple steps that they can take to protect themselves from 

spammers;

• The states have also been active in attempting to devise ways to stop 

spammers, such as imposing increased criminal penalties, requiring labels on 

unsolicited commercial email, and providing ISPs and consumers with the 

ability to sue spammers;

• Providers of email programs include increasingly sophisticated filtering tools 

in their software to enable users to filter spam before it gets to their e-mailboxes;

• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a leader and active participant in 

many of these endeavors, such as educating consumers and small businesses 

about how to protect themselves from spam through efforts like 

www.staysafeonline.info, and by working with industry and the FTC to help 

craft cooperative solutions to the common problems created by spam.

Many of these efforts have been relatively successful; while others have been abject failures, but combined they have done little to stem the overwhelming tide of 

unwanted bulk email. They have, however, helped to point out many of the critical 

shortcomings of current efforts. 

Any successful effort to stop spam will require several critical parts, including a 

range of tools, ideas, technology, market-based solutions, cooperation between businesses and with government, increased FTC enforcement, enhanced ability of ISPs 

to go after the bad actors, and increased and enhanced law enforcement, along with 

a strong, uniform, federal legislative standard. The crafters of this legislation, working with a wide range of experts, businesses, ISPs, consumer groups, law enforcement officials, and others, have identified these shortcomings, and have attempted 

to address them through this legislation. This legislation therefore, represents a 

critical and effective piece of the puzzle to combat spam, but does so in a narrowly 

targeted way that focuses on combating the clear abuses, while protecting the continued legitimate use of email. It also eliminates many of the mistakes in previous 

efforts, such as granting private rights of action for consumers or requiring labels 

for commercial email. 

One provision that this legislation adds to the current stable of tools to fight spam 

is an enhanced ability of ISPs, who are in the best position to trace the source of 

spam, to sue spammers, and institutes a single, nation-wide standard to facilitate 

their efforts. It does so in a way, however, that protects the needs of legitimate busiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Sep 10, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\WORK\CRIME\070803\88203.000 HJUD1 PsN: 88203
23

nesses to communicate with their customers through email. For instance, the legislation requires that ISPs establish a ‘‘pattern or practice’’ of violations with regards 

to disregarding an opt-out, but has no similar requirements when suing for intentional acts like using false header and routing information or harvesting email addresses—activities that legitimate companies would not undertake, and therefore no 

additional protection is required. 

The legislation will also help to empower the FTC giving the agency the tools it 

needs to improve its fight against spam and fraudsters who hock their wares 

through spam. The FTC has the experience and the ability to protect consumers 

from the dark underside of e-commerce, and it has the national, and in many cases, 

international, jurisdiction to stop spammers no matter where they reside. 

The RID Spam Act also provides state law enforcement with the ability to protect 

state residents from intentionally harmful acts committed by spammers, such as 

using false header and routing information and harvesting email addresses. It is entirely appropriate to provide the states with the ability to stop these types of egregious activities, but because of the difficulty of enforcing this type of provision 

across state lines, to limit their jurisdiction to intentional acts of spammers. We also 

believe that the ability of State Attorneys General to bring suits against spammers 

should be further limited by removing their opportunity to recover attorney’s fees 

in cases that they bring against spammers. 

This legislation also draws an appropriate balance between state and federal 

standards and jurisdiction. There are currently 28 states that have enacted some 

form of spam legislation, from increased civil and criminal enforcement to regulation 

of the content of email. This legislation provides the states with the continued authority to stop false and misleading messages, but provides for a single, uniform 

standard regarding other regulation of email. This is the appropriate balance. States 

traditionally have the authority to protect their consumers, and that authority is retained in this legislation. However, state regulation of email content has created a 

patchwork system of differing and inconsistent standards and definitions, resulting 

in an unnecessarily complex compliance system. We need preemptive federal legislation to harmonize these standards and provide powerful tools to enforcement officials. 

In addition to civil enforcement tools, the RID Spam Act also provides for criminal 

enforcement and criminal penalties in some cases, and we believe that these criminal provisions are carefully and narrowly drawn to target truly egregious, intentional behavior, and will provide an effective deterrent against criminals. 

There is little stomach in the business community for spam, and we strongly support the civil elements of this legislation to go after those companies and individuals. However, the activities of spammers are sometimes so egregious and harmful, 

that they rise to the level of a potential criminal offense, and those activities should 

be treated accordingly. For example, this legislation provides for criminal penalties 

when a spammer uses false header and routing information or the harvesting of 

email addresses. These activities, which no legitimate company would use, harm the 

whole e-commerce system and undermine the faith and trust in e-commerce, taking 

advantage of the most vulnerable among us. Further, because these are intentional, 

fraudulent acts perpetrated on unsuspecting consumers, criminal penalties certainly 

may be appropriate. 

Additionally, to further deter and punish this type of egregious behavior, the legislation contains significant civil penalties ISPs can enforce against spammers. Because ISPs are in the best position to find spammers and shut them down, providing 

them with the tools and incentives to undertake what may be an expensive and 

time consuming undertaking to thwart criminal activity is appropriate. 

In addition to strengthening the enforcement provisions used to stop spammers, 

this legislation will be effective because it eliminates many of the failed provisions 

that states have attempted to use to stop spam. For example, the RID Spam Act 

expressly requires that cases related to spam be heard in federal court, and it prohibits class actions by ISPs or causes of action by individual plaintiffs. These limitations provide necessary protection for legitimate companies while at the same time 

ensure that spammers will be subject to a wide range of enforcement activity from 

a host of levels. For instance, while it may be relatively easy to file a frivolous lawsuit against a legitimate company, it is often difficult to find and identify spammers. 

Therefore, it is vital to protect legitimate companies from exploitive suits for allegedly spamming. Further, granting consumers an individual right of action could 

ironically impede the ability of ISPs to find and sue spammers, because they would 

be forced to respond to a flood of discovery requests by consumers seeking to find 

spammers. 

The State of Utah provides a case study of why a consumer private cause of action 

should be excluded from a spam statute. Utah has enacted a ‘‘tough’’ spam statute 

24

that allows for a consumer private cause of action and class action suits. A single 

plaintiff’s firm in Utah has now filed hundreds of class action lawsuits under this 

statute. However, the firm is not pursuing spammers. Given the cost and complexity 

of finding actual spammers, this firm has targeted the low-hanging fruit—deep 

pocket, leading companies and brands who do not spam their customers, but simply 

have a presence online and in Utah. 

The legislation also explicitly rejects the use of labels, such as ‘‘ADV’’, and expressly forbids the FTC from requiring such labeling. The rationale behind this restriction is simple: legitimate companies will comply with regulations, even if they 

are burdensome and ineffective, but spammers will continue to ignore any and all 

regulations that they see as restricting their ability to mislead consumers. The goal 

of legislation should not be to give spammers and criminals a competitive advantage 

over legitimate companies, but should seek to reign in the fraudulent and misleading activities of spammers. 

Finally, while the Chamber believes that this legislation will be an effective tool 

in the overall fight against spam, as with any complex legislation in a fast-changing 

technological environment, a few modifications could help to improve the final product. 

For instance, during the first six months the legislation gives companies 20 business days to honor an opt-out, then reduces that time to 10 business days. No company wants to be labeled a spammer, and therefore companies will do their best to 

comply with all opt-out requests. However, not all companies are completely integrated, and many companies have multiple lists of customers that often do not 

speak to one another, making it impossible for a company to remove a customer 

within the requisite 10 business days. Further, given the ‘‘pattern and practice’’ language in Section 101 (b), if a company routinely fails to comply with the 10 business 

days, even if the company’s attempts are clearly good faith efforts, that still makes 

it vulnerable to suit by an enterprising ISP, and provides little or no defense for 

a company, subjecting them to a minimum of $75,000 in damages in each suit. Conversely, technology may enable many companies to comply with an opt-out request 

instantaneously, and therefore the 10 business days may prove to be too long. The 

goal of this legislation should be to protect legitimate companies. Therefore, we 

would suggest providing the FTC with the ability, through rulemaking, to determine 

the appropriate number of days, so that enforcement can reflect the realities of each 

company’s business, rather than an arbitrary period for compliance. 

Enforcement could also be enhanced by giving the FTC the ability and authority 

to go after those businesses that actually benefit from the use of spam. Generally, 

spammers are not promoting their own products, but are acting on behalf of businesses that hire them to bring in customers. These are the companies that hire 

spammers to sell their products. These so-called ‘‘promoted businesses,’’ whose products are hawked through a deluge of spam, are responsible for most of the spam 

that permeates the Internet. 

The FTC should be given the power and authority to pursue these promoted businesses. The FTC knows how to ‘‘follow the money’’ and such a provision would give 

the FTC the ability to do just that, but would circumvent its difficultly of finding 

actual ‘‘spammers.’’ The Chamber supported such a provision in the Burns-Wyden 

bill, and believes that such an addition would enhance the FTC’s ability to target 

spammers. 

Finally, we believe that spam should be enforced by functional regulators, rather 

than by the FTC, in industries where that is feasible. Again, we believe that spam 

legislation should minimize the burdens on legitimate companies while targeting 

spammers. Functional regulation would provide strong enforcement in cases where 

it is required, but would minimize the burden otherwise, because functional regulators are more familiar with the industries that they oversee, and there is less possibility of ‘‘getting it wrong’’ against legitimate companies if a functional regulator 

is involved. 

Mr. Chairman, again thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding this important issue. The RID Spam Act is balanced, effective legislation that will have a 

serious impact on the amount of spam, without adversely effecting the ability of 

companies to communicate with their customers and potential customers through 

whatever means the customer most desires, including through email communications. I look forward to working with you as this legislation moves to the House 

floor, and I am happy to answer any questions.

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Murray? 

25

STATEMENT OF CHRIS MURRAY, LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL, 

CONSUMERS UNION 

Mr. MURRAY. Chairman Coble, Ranking Member Scott and other 

distinguished Members of the Committee, I would like to thank you 

for the opportunity to testify before you today. 

As the excellent testimony of the witnesses that have gone before 

me has indicated, I don’t think I need to detail how serious the 

problem of spam has gotten. Some estimates are that spam is going 

to cost businesses and ultimately consumers $10 billion this year 

alone through the costs of the additional bandwidth that spam 

uses. Some estimate that by the end of this year spam will be half 

of all e-mail traffic. It is currently somewhere in the 40 percent 

range of all e-mail traffic. When Internet Service Providers have to 

ramp up the number of servers that they buy and they have to 

ramp up the filtering tools that they purchase and they have to 

ramp up in an arms race against spammers of the tactics that they 

use, this all costs consumers in the end. 

These spammers appear to be a bottomless source of ingenuity. 

They figured out ways to commandeer our computers to send spam 

for them. They have figured out ways to evade the filters that 

Internet Service Providers use. They have even figured out ways to 

spam us on new devices. 

I am hearing increased reports that consumers are getting spam 

on their mobile phones through text messaging. The incredibly annoying part of that is most spam on your personal computer, you 

can just hit delete. But the spam that comes over your mobile 

phone comes with a beep to tell you that it is there and it is there 

and it is going to be there until you get rid of it. So we know that 

the problem with spam is a severe one, and I commend the Committee for looking at serious legislation to help consumers deal 

with this problem. 

I commend the drafters of H.R. 2214 for a number of provisions 

in the bill which I think will go a long way toward helping consumers get rid of spam, especially its prohibition of false headers 

and its criminalization of fraud in spam and its labeling of pornography. I think I agree with the drafters of the bill that step number 

one in cleaning up this spam problem for consumers is getting rid 

of the fraud that is out there. 

As Mr. Rubin said, there are sort of two classes of spam out 

there. There are the rogue spammers who are God-knows-where 

overseas sending spam that evades filters. It is not legitimate businesses. It is often scams that will cost consumers big time. And 

then there are legitimate businesses that are using spam, although 

I would submit that consumers’ annoyance with spam does not end 

with the rogue spammers; and we need to be considering measures 

that will rid spam in both instances. 

I also commend the Committee for labeling pornography. I think 

this is extremely helpful for consumers, although I would probably 

prefer an approach such as in the Wilson Green Bill, which ensures 

that when consumers opt out of that spam, that pornography that 

was sent to them, they don’t have to view that pornography. I don’t 

think that is something we want our children having to see. 

Which brings me to where I think where H.R. 2214 falls down, 

and that is the primary means that the bill uses to rid consumers 

26

of spam is an opt-out provision or a provision that puts the burden 

on consumers every time they get a piece of spam to tell that individual marketer that they don’t want anymore spam from that particular person. The problem is, imagine if you put a ‘‘do not solicit’’

sign on your front door and the way that that do not solicit sign 

worked was that every solicitor that came to your door got one shot 

at you, every corporation that came got one shot, every branch of 

that corporation got one shot. We would spend our entire day just 

getting rid of those solicitors, as we will spend our entire days just 

getting rid of that spam. 

Our magazine, Consumer Reports, recommends opt-in as the way 

to truly rid consumers of spam. The reason that we think opt-in is 

absolutely critical because consumers find themselves in a paradox 

right now, which is, the recommendation we give consumers to get 

rid of spam is to do absolutely nothing. Don’t view spam. Don’t opt 

out. Don’t do anything. Because as soon as you opt out or even 

view it, I have recently found out, that tells the spammer that your 

e-mail address is a live address and so they then say, great, I am 

going to sell it to 50 other companies and make money on it, and 

I am going to continue to spam you. 

The problem is, once we have an opt-out regime with some stiffer 

penalties, which I think will go a long way, those penalties will not 

reach overseas; and that is a huge source of concern of spam right 

now because overseas companies are responsible for a huge volume 

of that spam. So if the burden is then on consumers to say, well, 

is this from the Netherlands or is this from within the United 

States, I think you can see it is extremely difficult to tell where 

that spam is coming from. So it seems unlikely to me that Consumer Reports’ recommendation would change even were this bill 

passed, that consumers exercise that opt-out. So we will still be 

telling consumers to do nothing, and there will be nothing that 

they can do to avail themselves. 

I will fast forward and just say I agree with the remarks of Mr. 

Moschella which say that, in order to stem the rising tide of spam, 

we need the help of everyone. We need the help of law enforcement, the Federal Trade Commission, and we need the help of consumers through a private right of action, and I believe we need the 

enforcement that comes with class action lawsuits. 

As Senator Hatch indicated in the Senate Judiciary Committee 

2 weeks ago when they enacted their bill, the Federal Trade Commission recently held a workshop on spam and it seemed to be the 

consensus of many participants in that workshop that opt-in combined with the private right of action and class action enforcement 

was perhaps the best way to rid consumers of spam. As Senator 

Hatch noted, the best model that we have for this is the Telephone 

Consumer Protection Act, or the TCPA, also known as the junk fax 

law. 

What that law did—Mr. Chairman, I will wrap up in 10 seconds—that law did provide as its two key elements private right 

of action, class action enforcement with an opt-in approach. 

I thank the Committee for the opportunity to testify today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Murray follows:]

27

1 Consumers Union is a nonprofit membership organization chartered in 1936 under the laws 

of the State of New York to provide consumers with information, education and counsel about 

goods, services, health, and personal finance; and to initiate and cooperate with individual and 

group efforts to maintain and enhance the quality of life for consumers. Consumers Union’s income is solely derived from the sale of Consumer Reports, its other publications and from noncommercial contributions, grants and fees. In addition to reports on Consumers Union’s own product testing, Consumer Reports and Consumer Reports Online (with approximately 5 million 

paid circulation) regularly carry articles on health, product safety, marketplace economics and 

legislative, judicial and regulatory actions which affect consumer welfare. Consumers Union’s publications carry no advertising and receive no commercial support. 2See Jonathan Krim, ‘‘Protecting Its Proprietary Pork.’’ Washington Post, July 1, 2003 (E01). ‘‘Early Internet users coined the term spam to describe junk e-mail after a skit by the comedy 

group Monty Python. In the routine, a group of patrons at a restaurant chant the word ‘‘spam’’ in louder and louder volume, drowning out other conversation.’’ 3See Jonathan Krim, ‘‘Spam’s Cost to Business Escalates.’’ Washington Post, March 13, 2003 

(A01). 4See www.ferris.com/rep/200301/SM.html. 5 ‘‘Spam: The Silent ROI Killer’’ by Nucleus Research. More information at: 

www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,111433,00.asp. 6See testimony of Ted Leonsis (Vice Chairman and President, Advanced Products Group, 

America Online) before the Senate Commerce Committee, May 21, 2003. 7 Jonathan Krim, ‘‘Web Firms Choose Profit Over Privacy.’’ Washington Post, July 1, 2001 

(A01). 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHRIS MURRAY

Subcommittee Chairman Coble, Ranking Member Scott, and other distinguished 

members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity today to represent Consumers Union,1 the print and online publisher of Consumer Reports, in your exploration of H.R. 2214, the ‘‘RID-SPAM Act’’ (sponsored by Reps. Burr, Sensenbrenner, 

and Tauzin). 

It is almost unnecessary for me to detail what the problem with ‘‘spam’’ 2 is, because every time we open up our email inboxes we are confronted with exactly how 

bad things have gotten. When I arrive at work every morning, I can be confident 

that I will be greeted with at least a dozen messages advertising everything from 

life insurance and credit card offers to Viagra alternatives and pornography. 

The ingenuity of spammers appears to be bottomless. They find our addresses in 

novel ways. They have figured out myriad methods to avoid being filtered by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and consumers. They have discovered how to commandeer our computers to send spam for them, and they are even finding new devices to spam us on. For example, text messaging on mobile phones, an increasingly 

popular application for consumers, is also becoming a haven for spam. While filtering technologies are becoming increasingly effective, unfortunately their efficacy 

is not increasing as fast as the volume of spam is growing. 

Spam costs consumers and businesses money. 

Some estimate that roughly 40% of all email is spam 3 and experts say that by 

the end of this year more than half of all email traffic will be spam. Consumers pay 

for all that spam, because when ISPs’ costs go up—because ISPs have to buy more 

servers and pay personnel to figure out how to filter that spam—consumers’ monthly ISP subscription fees go up. One company estimates that spam will cost business $10 billion dollars this year 

alone (due to lost productivity, bandwidth costs, and money spent on filtering 

tools).4 A study released last week estimates that spam costs businesses $874 per 

employee every year, because employees spend an average of 6.5 minutes every day 

dealing with it.5

America Online, the largest ISP, is currently blocking up to 2.4 billion spam messages every day.6 The costs of the bandwidth and servers required to move that volume of spam are astronomical—when we add the costs of sophisticated filtering systems and personnel to battle the continually escalating spam arms race, the costs 

of spam to ISPs (and ultimately to consumers) is truly staggering. 

Recently the Washington Post reported that mainstream e-commerce companies 

are selling consumers email addresses to spammers.7 For example, when consumers 

purchased popular ‘‘Hooked On Phonics’’ products, their addresses were being sold 

in complete violation of their privacy policy. That is, the company told consumers 

that they would not sell their personal information and then turned around and did 

precisely the opposite. ‘‘Hooked on Phonics’’ corporate parent subsequently updated 

their privacy policy and said that they meant to update it earlier; they claimed they 

had done nothing wrong, they were simply slow to update their privacy policy. 

Even worse, one company who was contracting with a 3rd party ‘‘shopping cart’’ provider (the mechanism used by consumers to complete an electronic commerce 

transaction) had a privacy policy which would have prevented consumers’ email adVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Sep 10, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 G:\WORK\CRIME\070803\88203.000 HJUD1 PsN: 88203
28

8 Id. 

9See Mike Banks Valentine, ‘‘E-Mail Appending Erodes Privacy.’’ CRM Buyer Magazine, May 

23, 2002. www.crmbuyer.com/perl/story/17914.html. 10www.ftc.gov/reports/spam/030429spamreport.pdf 

dresses from being shared with anyone. However, consumers might not have noticed 

that the shopping cart company behind the scenes of the electronic transaction—‘‘art 

Manager’’—had a completely different privacy policy and that by purchasing a product online, they were unwittingly making themselves vulnerable (there was no link 

to the shopping cart company’s privacy policy in the process of check out).8

A relatively new practice, known as ‘‘email appending,’’ raises enormous privacy 

concerns. Email appending is the practice of harvesting a consumer’s email address 

from a Web site or other means and combining that consumer’s email address with 

their mailing address, telephone number, and other personally identifiable information. 

Mainstream companies such as Sears are using email appending to merge customers email addresses with their mailing addresses and their automotive repair 

histories. A marketing magazine recently told its readers how to ‘‘email append’’

their mailing lists:

Send an Excel spreadsheet of your customers’ names, addresses and phone 

numbers to an e-mail appending company, and the appending company will 

send back e-mail addresses that belong to those customers.

What the appending company doesn’t mention is that often it is missing a good 

deal of the information that you possess, and it may decide to append your data 

to its files just as it appends its e-mail addresses to yours. That means you are 

paying the company to incorporate your information into its e-mail database.

For example, the automotive department at Sears provides its customers’

names, addresses, phone numbers, and car models, makes and repair histories 

to e-mail appending firms when it requests customers’ e-mail addresses. Sure, 

the company gets the e-mail addresses, but at the same time it contributes to 

privacy erosion—all so it can send an e-mail about its lube, oil and filter change 

special.9

A large percentage of spam is also fraudulent and/or misleading, making it a serious consumer problem as well as difficult to prosecute. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently issued a report 10 regarding false claims in spam, which found 

that 96% of spam had false information in either the message text or in the ‘‘From’’

and ‘‘Subject’’ lines. 

Clearly, spam is ripe for legislative action. We agree with the ISPs and others 

that strong criminal enforcement and an ISP right of action are essential ingredients to successfully reducing spam. But thus far the bills proposed, including H.R. 

2214, have an ‘‘opt-out’’ of spam as part of their core solution. In other words, an 

ISP must first pass on the spam to consumers, consumers must then read the spam, 

and then they can exercise their right to stop receiving messages from that particular sender (perhaps at their peril as described below). We believe H.R. 2214 

needs to be improved because it lacks an ‘‘opt-in’’ provision and private right of action for consumers at the same time that it excludes class action suits. This puts 

too much burden on consumers to block spam and makes it too difficult to hold 

spammers legally accountable for their inappropriate interference with consumers’

email. 

Imagine that you put a ‘‘do not solicit’’ sign at the front door of your home, and 

every company in the world could only ring your doorbell once, at which point you 

would have the option to tell that salesperson that you did not want to be contacted 

anymore. Of course, in addition to telling that salesperson you didn’t want to be solicited, you would have to do the same for solicitors that work for a different branch 

of the same company. You would need to keep track of each company you told not 

to solicit you, and if a company violated your request, you could petition the Federal 

Trade Commission to take up your case. 

Of course, this is an absurd burden to place on people. We all know that ‘‘do not 

solicit’’ means exactly that. Consumers can say no to advertising at their front door, 

period. The Federal Trade Commission’s recent enactment of a robust ‘‘do not call’’

list means that now consumers have a tool to say no advertising at the dinner table. 

It is now incumbent on Congress to provide consumers with a tool to say no to advertising on our computers. 

When the Federal Trade Commission recently took a close look at spam and what 

could be done to reduce it, many, if not most of the participants in that workshop 

29

11Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Patrick Leahy Press Release, ‘‘Hatch, Leahy Target Most 

Egregious Computer Spammers.’’ Jun. 18, 2003. 12 Id. 13 Jonathan Krim, ‘‘Internet Providers Battling to Shape Legislation: Microsoft, Others, Said 

to Want Immunity.’’ Washington Post, July 5, 2003 (D10). 14Testimony of Ronald Scelson before the Senate Commerce Committee, May 21, 2003. 

agreed that opt-in was the best way to eliminate spam. It would be unwise for Congress to proceed down the opt-out path, which was clearly disfavored by experts. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatch suggested several weeks ago that 

he would be willing to consider drafting legislation that entails an opt-in approach. 

He noted that one of the primary weaknesses of opt-out is that it leaves the burden 

on the consumer to eliminate spam. ‘‘People who receive dozens, even hundreds, of 

unwanted emails each day would have little time or energy for anything other than 

opting-out from unwanted spam.’’ 11

Senator Hatch continued on to say that,

‘‘[a] third way of attacking spam—and one that was favored by many panelists 

and audience members at the FTC forum—is to establish an opt-in system, 

whereby bulk commercial email may only be sent to individuals and businesses 

who have invited or consented to it. This approach has strong precedent in the 

Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which Congress passed to 

eliminate similar cost-shifting, interference, and privacy problems associated 

with unsolicited commercial faxes. The TCPA’s ban on faxes containing unsolicited advertisements has withstood First Amendment challenges in the courts, 

and was adopted by the European Union in July 2002.’’ 12

As Senator Hatch points out, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (also known 

as the ‘‘Junk Fax’’ law) could serve as a good model for dealing with spam. That 

law successfully helped eliminate junk faxing by 1) establishing an opt-in regime 

and 2) preserving a private right of action against violators, especially by allowing 

for the possibility of class action enforcement. We believe that the threat of class 

action enforcement combined with an opt-in approach is the best way to reduce 

spam for consumers. 

In addition, Congress should not allow ISPs to be the primary entities driving a 

legislative solution. ISPs are an integral part of any solution, as their technical expertise and participation in enforcement is essential, but they have mixed incentives 

with regard to spam. 

ISPs have clear incentives to reduce some amount of spam, because it costs them 

an enormous amount of money—except where the ISP is also a marketer. In the 

case of AOL and Microsoft, the two largest ISPs, those companies have clear incentives to get rid of other people’s spam, but not such clear incentives to have limitations on their own spam. In fact, it may be that the best way for AOL and Microsoft 

to maximize their marketing revenues is to get rid of everyone’s spam but their own, 

so that they can charge would-be spammers for preferred placement of spam. As the 

Washington Post recently reported, California state legislators were recently pressured by these companies as they tried to beef up spam regulations:

One [California] state senator, who represents several Los Angeles suburbs, accused Microsoft of eleventh-hour arm-twisting to exempt Internet service providers from responsibility for being the conduits of spam. Firms such as Microsoft, America Online and Yahoo Inc. market to their own members, and large 

portions of overall e-mail traffic traverse their systems.

‘‘Microsoft is talking out of both sides of its mouth,’’ said state Sen. Debra 

Bowen (D), who points to statements by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates about 

how much the company is fighting to eliminate junk e-mail. But ‘‘their focus has 

been on getting immunity for themselves and preserving their ability to strike 

deals to send spam,’’ she said.13

Ronald Scelson, also known as the ‘‘Cajun Spammer,’’ testified before the Senate 

Commerce Committee 14 that some ISPs are signing ‘‘pink contracts’’ which allow 

spammers to send emails to ISPs’ subscribers, charging the spammers more than 

they charge other commercial clients. 

If these allegations are true, then it is unwise for Congress to give ISPs consumers’ proxy on spam by allowing ISPs to have a right of action against spammers 

at the exclusion of individual suits and class actions. Giving ISPs a right of action 

will certainly help those ISPs to maximize the revenues they receive from spammers 

by providing them with a very large stick for spammers that do not pay, but it does 

not appear to be the best way to reduce spam. 

30

Until Congress enacts meaningful legislation to fix the spam problem, Consumer 

Reports recommends that consumers deal with spam by doing nothing. This means 

do not respond to spam, do not view spam, and most especially, do not opt-out of 

spam because this will tell spammers that your email address is a functioning one. 

This recommendation—that consumers do nothing with spam, and especially do 

not opt-out—is at obvious odds with bills that provide for opt-out as their way to 

clean up spam. That is because when consumers opt-out they are verifying for a 

spammer that their email addresses are current. Under an opt-out law, consumers 

would ostensibly have a remedy with spammers within the United States (i.e. 

spammers using opt-out for illegitimate purposes such as verifying that an email address is current could be prosecuted), but the opt-out law would still not apply for 

any spam originating outside the U.S.-spammers in other countries or offshore could 

not be prosecuted. Furthermore, it would be extremely difficult for consumers to tell 

whether email is originating from the U.S. or elsewhere. 

In other words, once an opt-out spam bill were enacted into law, because of the 

continued possibility of cross-border fraud, we would still recommend to consumers 

that they should not exercise the opt-out—leaving consumers no better off than they 

are today. 

In our August issue of Consumer Reports, we recommend the following 8 ways 

to block spam:

1. Don’t buy anything promoted in spam. Even if the offer isn’t a scam, you are 

helping to finance spam.

2. If your email address has a ‘‘preview pane,’’ disable it to prevent the spam 

from reporting to its sender that you’ve received it.

3. Use one email address for family and friends, another for everyone else. Or 

pick up a free one from Hotmail, Yahoo!, or a disposable forwarding-address 

service like www.SpamMotel.com. When an address attracts too much spam, 

abandon it for a new one.

4. Use a provider that filters email, such as AOL, Earthlink, or MSN. If you 

get lots of spam, your ISP may not be filtering effectively. Find out its filtering features and compare them with competitors’.

5. Report spam to your ISP. To help the FTC control spam, forward it to 

uce@ftc.gov. (‘‘uce’’ stands for unsolicited commercial email).

6. If you receive spam that promotes a brand, complain to the company behind 

the brand by postal mail, which makes more of a statement than email.

7. If your email program offers ‘‘rules’’ or ‘‘filters,’’ use one to spot messages 

whose header contains one of more of these terms: html, text/html, 

multipart/alternative, or multipart/mixed. This can catch most spam, but 

may also catch most of the legitimate emails that are formatted to look like 

a Web page.

8. Install a firewall if you have broadband so a spammer can’t plant software 

on your computer to turn it into a spamming machine. An unsecured computer can be especially attractive to spammers.

As mentioned earlier, as a legislative remedy, an opt-in regime (with a private 

right of action) appears to be the best choice. We recommend that consumers not 

opt-out of spam because this will simply confirm for the spammer that their email 

address is a live one. Opting out means getting more spam. 

If we put ourselves in the shoes of a consumer trying to opt-out from spam several 

years from now, imagine trying to tell the difference between spam that is from a 

legitimate marketer, spam that originated from an overseas or offshore server, and 

spam that is simply a ripoff. There is no way I can think of under an opt-out regime 

to differentiate between these different types of spam. Opt-out may turn out to be 

a cop out. 

It may be that there is a possibility for a modified version of opt-out, such as optout that allows for an entire domain to opt-out (e.g. ‘‘aol.com’’ could opt-out for all 

its users, so that individual users, such as ‘‘jane—doe@aol.com’’ do not have to give 

their names to spammers). This is one potential implementation of the ‘‘national do 

not spam’’ registry proposed by Senator Schumer. I have some misgivings about a 

‘‘national do not spam’’ registry because of the obvious security risks posed by such 

a list, but I wonder if allowing entire domains to opt-out obviates some of those potential risks. 

In addition, by including preemption of state laws and class actions, I believe HR 

2214 will fail to stem the rising tide of spam. Congress should enact federal legislation that offers basic protection for consumers, and states should have a right to 

31

increase such protections based on unique local needs, just as the FTC did with the 

Federal ‘‘Do Not Call’’ list. 

Any solution in the end will need to involve a variety of methods and actors, including a legislative remedy (opt-in with both private and ISP rights of action in 

addition to criminal enforcement), action from industry to improve filtering technologies as well as a way to attack the problem across international borders. It will 

be critical that Congress address the immense volume of fraud in spam, but Congress should also consider measures that will address mainstream companies’ use 

of spam. While fraud is a huge problem, consumers’ annoyance with spam does not 

end with rogue spammers. Just as the FTC’s national ‘‘do not call’’ list allowed consumers to say no to advertising at the dinner table, consumers should have the ability to say no to all spam, even when that spam comes from companies that are not 

engaged in fraud.

Mr. COBLE. We thank all of you for being here; and we have been 

joined by the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Goodlatte. 

Mr. Attorney General Kilgore, the bill if enacted would not only 

allow you to continue to enforce your own law but also provide a 

role for States’ attorneys general to enforce the Federal statute. Do 

you believe that you would use those provisions or would you for 

the most part continue to focus on enforcing your own law? 

Mr. KILGORE. We have great cooperative efforts with both United 

States attorneys in Virginia. We would work with the United 

States attorneys as we do on most computer crimes currently. We 

have our Computer Crimes Unit that have prosecutors who are 

cross-designated and has special assistant United States attorneys, 

and we would use the same calculus looking at the Federal statute 

versus the State statute and see which would provide the best deterrent to the particular criminal act. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Moschella, we have heard testimony and gathered evidence that spam is, in fact, a real problem. But in the 

grand scheme of vile conduct with which your Department must 

deal, it probably ranks on the lower end of the scale, I am thinking. 

If this legislation is enacted, how will it affect the Justice Department’s resources, A; B, are you going to have to divert attention 

from the terrorism, emphasis on homeland security and other priorities or will you be concentrating your prosecutorial resources on 

the very worst spam offenders? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The short answer is we will focus our attention on the most egregious spammers who are falsifying their identities and sending 

these pornographic e-mails without the proper labeling. 

It is true we will not be able to go after every spammer. As you 

know, and this Committee has a great interest in the work of the 

Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal 

Division, there are 40 attorneys there working on a range of 

issues—hacking, denial of service attacks and the like. We think 

that the most egregious types of spam can be dealt with by the 

Justice Department in a criminal setting, understanding that this 

is a piece of the larger solution. As I said in my statement, international cooperation is needed, as is cooperation with ISPs and the 

constant vigilance of consumers. 

Mr. COBLE. I am going to suspend for the moment in view of 

your departure, Mr. Kilgore, to permit other Members to question 

you before you leave; and then we can resume a second round. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

32

Mr. Kilgore, one of the problems that we have been dealing with 

here is the problem of jurisdiction, because the Internet is kind of 

hard to nail down. Criminal laws require you to commit the crime 

within your jurisdiction. How does Virginia expect to figure out 

which of the spammers are within the jurisdiction of Virginia or 

are you going to use the fact that it landed on a Virginia computer 

to get jurisdiction? 

Mr. KILGORE. We will use every way we can to get jurisdiction. 

We will use the fact that it landed on a Virginia computer to get 

jurisdiction. We have on the civil side successfully defended the 

constitutionality of Virginia’s long-arm statute in reaching those 

who have been sending spam through Virginia illegally and using 

civil enforcement mechanisms. We have defended that on two different occasions. So our law does allow us to base jurisdiction on 

the fact that it came into a Virginia computer. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, in the Virginia law, you have a private right 

of action? 

Mr. KILGORE. Yes, we do. 

Mr. SCOTT. What can an individual sue for? 

Mr. KILGORE. Under our Virginia law to that point, mostly it has 

been used by ISPs, Congressman Scott to sue these spammers. But 

the consumers as well can seek the—any person is allowed to sue 

and any person is allowed to sue for the actual damages they have 

suffered from the spam. 

Mr. SCOTT. Do they get attorneys fees? 

Mr. KILGORE. They do as well get attorneys fees. 

Mr. SCOTT. Does the Virginia law prohibit—require the identifiers in the e-mail? You do not. 

Mr. KILGORE. We do not. We looked at that Congressman Scott 

and determined that the law-abiding ones would be the only ones 

that would comply. 

Mr. SCOTT. And there are also some constitutional limitations on 

that that may complicate prosecution. 

Mr. KILGORE. Right. 

Mr. COBLE. We are pleased to recognize the primary sponsor of 

the bill, the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. 

Burr; and in order of appearance the gentleman from Wisconsin is 

recognized to question the Attorney General. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. 

I guess my questions are to basically everyone on the panel: 

What is wrong with an opt-in provision? I guess I will start with 

you, Mr. Moschella. What is wrong with an opt-in provision? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Mr. Green, the Department of Justice 

hasn’t——

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Green, if you will suspend. Mr. Green, the Attorney General is going to have to leave at 11. 

Mr. GREEN. I will reserve my time. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman from California. 

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the Chairman; and I apologize, Mr. Attorney 

General, if—I was out of the room—if you may have responded to 

this already. 

The main question, I had offered an amendment in the last session that would have required ADV to appear in the subject line 

that would allow people to use either private software or merely 

33

delete it on their own. There are a couple of bills that are more 

along that model than the one we have been focusing on, and I 

wonder if you could comment on the various strengths and weaknesses. 

The present bill has some provisions about the veracity of some 

of the claims that are made which may be more difficult to tackle 

legally. Would we be better off with a bill that requires ADV language in it, allows you to basically—or requires spammers to check 

a spam list and remove you, much as we did with the phones? 

Would that be a cleaner approach? 

Mr. KILGORE. Using ADV, certainly that those who are law abiding would comply. They would be glad to place ADV. For those who 

are law abiding and send out adult material, I am sure they would 

be glad to put ADT on their e-mails. However, in studying the labeling laws of other States, those States that had strong labeling 

laws and thought that would be the solution to this problem, we 

found that it wasn’t a solution, that the spammers were still sending these unsolicited bulk e-mails. The topic that bothers us, the 

obscene material, Virginia’s law now covers obscene as opposed to 

pornographic material. We covered the obscene material to make 

sure that we can go after those individuals. We just did not believe 

that having ADV as part of Virginia law was the solution, that we 

needed tougher criminal penalties, we needed forfeiture penalties 

to move beyond just the cost of doing business to make it hurt 

these spammers. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Is that the issue, though, about what the penalty 

ought to be for the failure to include ADV or do you need other liability for the truth or veracity of the labeling? 

Mr. KILGORE. Certainly, Congressman, you could make tough 

penalties for failing to include ADV or ADT; and that would be a 

good step, I would think, if you want to go down that road. 

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the gentleman. I yield back the balance of 

my time. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Feeney. 

Mr. FEENEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you, Mr. Kilgore. I have a number of short questions. 

Does the Virginia statute preempt local governments from getting involved in regulating spam activity? 

Mr. KILGORE. Generally, in Virginia, the laws are passed at the 

State level for criminal acts, and the Commonwealth attorneys are 

elected locally, and they enforce the Virginia code. Local ordinances 

rarely cover criminal natures of this. They tend to be limited to 

traffic and other offenses. 

Mr. FEENEY. Well, elsewhere in the country, they tend to wander 

into other areas, everything from interest rates to fair credit reporting. So there is no specific preemption as a presumption. 

Mr. KILGORE. In Virginia, we have what we call the Dillon rule, 

which prevents local governments from getting into any area that 

the State does not give them permission to get into. They haven’t 

asked for permission to get into regulating spammers, and I am not 

sure that the General Assembly would give them that permission. 

Mr. FEENEY. The application of the long-arm statute and with 

the constitutional minimum contacts test, presumably you don’t try 

to interfere with spammers who are just using your lines from—

34

going from a Maryland-based spammer to a customer in Pennsylvania because you need some minimum contacts. Presumably, your 

statutes already prohibit fraud. Have you been able to apply successfully to a constitutional challenge about minimum contacts a 

situation where an unsolicited spam was sent to an individual who 

wasn’t victimized by fraud but just bothered and harassed? Has 

this been tested under your statute? 

Mr. KILGORE. Yes, it has. We have defended the constitutionality 

on two different occasions, one with an ISP and the other with a 

consumer action. 

Mr. FEENEY. What was the highest level of appellate court that 

ratified the constitutionality? 

Mr. KILGORE. I think it went to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals—the Federal. 

Mr. FEENEY. Presumably, civil penalties, including attorneys fees 

and civil damages, would be a deterrent to individuals or businesses with assets. The big problem out there is that a lot of 

spammers have literally no assets or at least none that are attachable. So the question is, heretofore we haven’t made it a criminal 

penalty, for example, to invade my mailbox with unsolicited junk 

mail; and one of the problems we have is people like me who have 

very old-fashioned principles trying to apply those old-fashioned 

principles to new technological applications. If we are not going to 

criminalize someone who wants to routinely drop junk mail in my 

mailbox, what is the principal distinction between criminalizing 

unwanted but not fraudulent spam in my inbox? 

Mr. KILGORE. You know, the Virginia statute talks about the 

fraudulent—using fraudulent means. We make the fraudulent 

means the felony in Virginia, where you are changing the addresses so that you can’t trace it back to a legitimate business so that 

you can’t ask to be removed from their list. So we certainly base 

our law on fraudulent acts occurring. 

Mr. FEENEY. I will ask one last question because I appreciate 

what you have done. The fraud is already proscribed in most States 

and in Federal law. I guess here is my bottom line. Supposing I am 

one of those old-fashioned guys that almost believes in buyer beware. I would never buy anything over the telephone or Internet, 

no matter how reputable the seller was. I want to go kick tires. 

Just supposing hypothetically for a second—— What bothers me about spam is the same thing that bothered me 

coming home from the 4th of July weekend in western Pennsylvania, the traffic jam that is created. And I know that that is what 

bothers the Chamber of Commerce. I know that is what bothers legitimate businesses trying to use the Internet. It is the harassment 

feature that in many respects for me is the bigger trouble than the 

outright fraud, which is already proscribed. Can you give me a 

principle to lay down my support for this bill? 

Mr. COBLE. If you can do that quickly. I want to give everybody 

a chance to examine you. 

Mr. KILGORE. I can stand at my mailbox, and I know junk mail 

when I see it, and I can dump it in the trash can in the house. Unfortunately, with the computer, you so often have to open it up to 

see if it is serious business, if someone is trying to contact you, in 

my case, if a constituent is trying to ask an important question. 

35

Then all of a sudden you get obscene material coming across your 

computer or you have to deal with the annoyance of opening it and 

then deleting it and so often businesses have to employ and purchase so much new technology just to deal with this. In Virginia, 

AOL—I mean, the millions they stop each and every day from just 

getting to consumers all around the world——

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman from Ohio. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and, Attorney General 

Kilgore, I want to join my colleague from Virginia, Mr. Scott, in 

welcoming you to the Committee. He noted that you are a graduate 

of William and Mary’s Law School, and I am a graduate of the undergraduate program. I spent 4 wonderful years at the College of 

William and Mary. 

Mr. COBLE. Keep it objective. 

Mr. CHABOT. But I will be very objective, although it is somewhat difficult. I was just down there last weekend over the break 

and took my family to Busch Gardens, and I kept trying to convince my 5-year-old that a 50-year-old guy shouldn’t be on Apollo’s 

chariot. So he dragged me on and—were you going to comment? 

Mr. KILGORE. I wouldn’t get on it either. 

Mr. CHABOT. I did, unfortunately. 

In any event, the questions I have are just a couple, and I will 

be real brief. How would this legislation or how does your legislation deal with one of the issues that Mr. Murray brought up and 

that is the difficulty of overseas spammers? I know yours was only 

enacted, you said, 7 days ago. 

Mr. KILGORE. Seven days ago. 

Mr. CHABOT. It is difficult to say what your experience is. 

Mr. KILGORE. We are forming task forces with the ISPs, with 

those in the Federal Government to come up with a plan to deal 

with these overseas individuals. You know certainly they will have 

contact with Virginia computers, they will have contact coming 

through Virginia ISPs, and we want to work to bring them to justice in Virginia. 

Mr. CHABOT. Secondly, along the lines of what Mr. Green was 

going to say and with some of the other panel members, what was 

Virginia’s rationale or thought process relative to not going to an 

opt-in type statute? 

Mr. KILGORE. Well, we didn’t—we have not addressed opt in or 

opt out as far as our consumers go. We provide civil remedies for 

consumers. As far as I am concerned, I personally prefer to opt into 

something as opposed to opt out. But we have seen the opt-out program work well with the telemarketers bill that Congress passed. 

You have millions of people opting out—registering on the Federal 

do-not-call list. 

Mr. CHABOT. My understanding is—how would this work as far 

as—I mean, it wouldn’t be the same type of thing, would it, where 

you could just call some number and opt out of all of it in the proposed legislation. That is not what we have in mind here, but I 

guess that is something for us to consider. But, finally, did Virginia—are there other States that have already passed or—I 

wouldn’t say passed legislation about this. Do we know the experience of any other States or is Virginia on the cutting edge? 

36

Mr. KILGORE. We believe we are on the cutting edge on this one. 

We have looked at other States’ laws in crafting this legislation. 

We believe we needed to move much further and bring criminal actions and make it felonies for these type of activities as well as continue our tough civil penalties. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay. Thank you very much. I yield back my time, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Attorney General, one more questioner. And he 

is, appropriately enough from your State. Mr. Goodlatte. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope I am in under 

the wire here with our great Attorney General. I want to thank you 

first for holding this hearing. And I was pleased to introduce this 

legislation, along with my friend, Mr. Burr from North Carolina, 

and most pleased that we have been able to work together with the 

Commerce Committee. 

I appreciate your show of support by coming today. In the last 

Congress, this Committee passed out a variation of a bill that I introduced in the last Congress, and we confronted the Commerce 

Committee with a different bill. 

And this time, I think because the chairmen of both the Committees have worked together and have cosponsored the legislation, 

this bill has great prospects for success. I thank the gentleman 

from North Carolina for his leadership on that. 

I want to welcome my good friends, Joe Rubin and Will 

Moschella. I especially want to welcome our Attorney General. I 

thank you for coming to testify today. But I most especially thank 

you for the leadership that you have shown on this issue. You do 

have, as a result of your personal efforts and the efforts of the Attorney General’s Office, and the Virginia General Assembly, the 

toughest anti-spam bill in the country. 

And I think it is important that Virginia show that leadership, 

because the State is the hub of so much Internet activity for not 

just the country but the world. I also appreciate very much the 

focus that you have taken on the criminal nature of this. 

In response to the gentleman representing Consumer’s Union 

and to my good friend from Florida, I would just say that when I 

go to that mailbox, and I pull out all of that junk mail, 90 percent 

of it goes straight into the trash. 

But maybe 10 percent of it is something that I may have some 

interest in. And for that reason alone, I think an opt-out approach 

is the most suitable here. If you take the ability of legitimate businesses to share information with consumers out of the process by 

requiring the consumer find them first, and opt-in to the process, 

then you are taking the information out of the most important vehicle for sharing information of the information age, the Internet, 

and therefore, I think that is a bad approach. 

Can I ask you, Attorney General Kilgore, why Virginia has determined that criminal penalties are necessary to combat spam? 

Mr. KILGORE. Well, we just found that the civil penalties, while 

ISPs were using them, individuals were beginning to use the civil 

penalties, they just weren’t working. Spammers were chalking it up 

to the cost of doing business. They were adding it into their costs 

and continuing to operate and continuing to spam individuals. 

37

We believe criminal sanctions will make a big difference in Virginia. We are already working with the ISPs to target some of 

these individuals who are violating Virginia Statute. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you very much. I appreciate your shortness of time and wish you could stay longer. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Goodlatte, you did not include Mr. Murray as 

you were welcoming others. I am sure you are glad to have him 

here. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, in doing so, I disagreed with him. 

Thank you. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Attorney General, delight to have you with us. 

We will excuse you. We will revert to the regular order now in our 

second round. 

Mr. Moschella and/or Mr. Rubin, there is broad recognition, it 

seems to me, that some balanced Federal legislation may be of benefit. But I also detect equally broad recognition that perhaps no 

legislation alone can resolve the spam problem, and that any bill 

which attempted to do so might pose a substantial risk of unintended harm to the Internet. 

Now, Mr. Moschella do you think criminal penalties alone, or for 

that matter any legislation alone can solve the problem? And I 

would like to hear from you as well, Mr. Rubin. 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Spam isn’t going to 

be stopped by the passage of legislation alone. And it will be a combination of solutions that will address it. As I testified, and as the 

Justice Department is particularly concerned about in this bill, 

criminal prosecution for the very worst offenders, civil and administrative remedies against those who cause harm by failing to follow the rules of the road the Congress will lay out; continued technological development that will assist network providers and users 

to filter their e-mail or set their preferences on their computer 

inbox and continued consumer awareness and vigilance about how 

to protect themselves on line. 

Mr. Chairman, if I may. I would just like to address one issue. 

Maybe I misunderstood something that Mr. Feeney said. He said 

that fraud was already illegal. That is true when we are thinking 

about the scams. I am not an expert in section 5 of the FTC Act. 

But, he is correct in that front. 

But the kind of fraud that we are talking about there, using 

fraudulent identity to get around the ISPs, to route the e-mail, the 

commercial e-mail to avoid detection, to avoid the victims, that is 

not illegal and that is what this bill will do. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Rubin, do you want to be heard? 

Mr. RUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Coble. The legislation is not going to 

solve the problem on its own. And criminal penalties certainly will 

not solve the problem on their own, but criminal penalties can be 

an effective backstop. They can help with the worst of the worst, 

those who clearly and intentionally violate the law to try and either defraud consumers or defraud ISPs. 

But, it is going to take more. ISPs have filed hundreds of lawsuits against spammers and recovered millions of dollars in damages. That effort will continue and will be facilitated, I think, by 

this legislation. Technology is going to play a key role. ISPs are experimenting with new filters and with new technology every day. 

38

Consumer education is certainly going to play a major role, and 

enforcement by the FTC and by others is a necessary component 

to this. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you. Mr. Murray, you testified about an individual private right of action, but you also noted the difficulties of 

enforcement against the true problem, spammers, some of whom 

are offshore. Even the most sophisticated enforcement units of the 

ISPs and the Department of Justice encountered difficulty in tracking the identity of some of those people. How would the average 

consumer track down such spammers, and is there not a real possibility that consumer suits would instead be concentrated against 

the easy-to-locate legitimate businesses who occasionally make a 

mistake, rather than the real problem spammers, the herbal 

Viagras, the porn spammers, et cetera, of the world. 

Mr. MURRAY. Well, Chairman Coble, the first part of that question is the difficulty of the average consumer in tracking down the 

spammer. And that is why I think class action suits are absolutely 

critical to enforcement, because it allows what is a relatively minor 

cost to an individual consumer to be aggregated over a large body 

of consumers, and that gives the right incentives to actually get 

spam taken care of. 

As far as the second part of the question, I can’t—I think you are 

right that they would first go after deep pockets. And that is why 

if we set up a system whereby good actors have a mechanism that 

they can still reach consumers, I think that that works. 

To respond to something that was said about opt-in sort of taking 

the Internet out of the advertising world, I think it is clear that 

what we are talking about here is not removing the Internet as advertising vehicles. Consumers will still get pop-up ads, they will 

still be able to go, when they are on any Internet site, they will 

get banner ads, there are lots of possibilities for advertising. 

The difference here is that e-mail is a means that—of one-on-one 

communication, and it is the same difference that allowed the Federal Trade Commission recently to enact the Federal do-not-call 

list, where, you know, we said you can put a do-not-solicit sign on 

your front door, and now the Federal Trade Commission and the 

President have said, you can put a do-not-solicit sign at your dinner table. 

And I think it is incumbent on Congress to say the same thing 

for consumers with respect to e-mail. If I can say one more—— Mr. COBLE. My time has expired. So wrap up. 

Mr. MURRAY. Certainly. To respond to Representative Goodlatte’s 

point about opt-in versus opt-out, I think the big difference between direct mail and e-mail is this: There is a cost with direct 

mail which is borne by the sender of that mail, and that is not the 

case with spam. 

If each spammer had to spend 37 cents to send every individual 

spam, I don’t suspect Mr. Scelson, the Cajun Spammer, would be 

able to send 180 million e-mails every day. 

Mr. COBLE. Well, that would clearly be a disincentive. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Moschella, on the 

identifiers, there have been a number of Supreme Court cases protecting the right to anonymous speech, some of these have been acVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:15 Sep 10, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 G:\WORK\CRIME\070803\88203.000 HJUD1 PsN: 88203
39

tually been applied to e-mail. How would this bill fare under those 

cases? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Thank you, Mr. Scott. We have taken a look at 

that issue. You are right. Commercial speech enjoys First Amendment protection. That is why, in our written testimony, we asked 

the Committee to narrow the false identifier provision to make sure 

it is material. 

With that change, that is, that the falsification, that it is a material falsification, we believe that change will ensure that this provision survives any Constitutional scrutiny. 

Mr. SCOTT. How does that deal with the right to anonymous 

speech? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Well, Mr. Scott, in these cases, we don’t know 

any legitimate reason, I can think of no legitimate reason for commercial speech to be anonymous to hide one’s identify from the ultimate end user. I don’t think this is the case of Thomas Payne and 

political speech. 

Mr. SCOTT. That is fine. What does the Supreme Court say about 

that, or what have the Courts said about the right to anonymous 

speech? Mr. Murray, do you want to give any comment on that? 

Mr. MURRAY. I am not the world’s foremost First Amendment expert, Representative Scott, but my understanding is that there has 

always been a very clear distinction in the law between commercial 

speech on one hand and political speech on the other. 

And I think that measures, such as the Telephone Consumer 

Protection Act, have survived first amendment scrutiny. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, Mr. Moschella, this bill is not limited to bulk 

e-mail. It would include individual e-mail. Is that my understanding? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. My understanding is that the statute sets out 

some thresholds that would be part of the trigger for prosecution. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, Mr. Rubin, you indicated a term, ‘‘bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail.’’ do you want all of those to apply before 

any legislation affects the communication, that it would have to be 

bulk, it would have to be unsolicited, and it would have to be commercial? 

Mr. RUBIN. Well, there has to be a clear distinction drawn between e-mail that is fraudulent, that has indicia of fraud. As the 

FTC pointed out, more than 60 percent of the e-mail that they have 

investigated has indicia of fraud versus e-mail sent out by legitimate companies. 

So we think that the threshold, the first threshold needs to be 

indicia of fraud or misleading, and clearly there needs to be 

some——

Mr. SCOTT. Well, if it is not fraudulent, if it is not misleading, 

it is just a bunch of advertisements, true advertisements, not hiding anything, is that—should that not be covered? 

Mr. RUBIN. It clearly is covered under this legislation. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? 

Mr. RUBIN. It is not a bad thing that e-mail—that e-mail senders 

should not hide their identities, should not use fraudulent header 

or routing information——

40

Mr. SCOTT. But there should be unlimited right to fill up your 

mailbox with—your e-mail mailbox with unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail? 

Mr. RUBIN. Again, we have to look at the distinction between legitimate senders and illegitimate senders. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, legitimate senders. 

Mr. RUBIN. Legitimate senders—we think before you try and 

tackle the—as you point out the Constitutional problems and other 

problems with legitimate senders, you need to look at—— Mr. SCOTT. Some people are offended by legitimate advertisements loading up your mailbox on your computer. 

Mr. RUBIN. Well, Mr. Scott, as I pointed out in my testimony and 

as—companies want to keep consumers as their customers. Legitimate companies intentionally try and keep customers, they try and 

make sure that they are happy customers. They respect opt-outs. 

They respect the rights of their customers and their potential customers. If they don’t, as a business, I am going to lose that potential customer. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. Mr. Moschella, is there a private right of action in the bill? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. I understand that there is. 

Mr. SCOTT. Individual right of action, or the right of 

AOL or the ISP to take a private action? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. In title 2 of the bill, there is a private right for 

the ISPs and the FTC and the Attorney General can act, also pursuant to that provision. 

Mr. SCOTT. What about an individual? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. I don’t believe so. No, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. Technologically, does the ISP provider have the ability to stop bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. That is a question better posed to the ISPs. My 

understanding is that, yes, they can filter e-mail as long as, you 

know, however they set their filtering systems to capture the mail. 

The problem here is, and the reason why, at least on the—with regard to the criminal provision we feel it so important, is that these 

spammers, like this individual who testified before the Senate, are 

sending hundreds and thousands and millions of e-mails a day by 

avoiding those filters, flaunting the rules of the ISPs, the contractual obligations that they have, and in many cases, using weaknesses in third party computers, misconfigured computers, if you 

will, to send their spam. 

We believe that this is the most egregious type of mail, and if 

you can address the fraudulently sent mail, you will be addressing 

a large part of the problem. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. RUBIN. If I can answer. The ISPs are private networks. They 

have agreements with their customers and with folks who—who 

use their networks. You know, they spend millions of dollars every 

year to maintain their systems, to upgrade their systems, to make 

sure that their customers have the highest speed possible and 

other provisions. 

They also try and filter out spam. You know, they have agreements with their customers that if you send out fraudulent spam, 

for example, from your e-mail account, we can shut you down. So 

41

they do have the authority. And this bill does not impact that authority one way or the other. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to, one more 

time, briefly go through the opt-in versus opt-out question, because 

I think it is the most interesting debate in this legislation. So I will 

begin with our new assistant Attorney General. 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Thank you, Mr. Green. As I started saying earlier, the Department has not taken a position on opt-in versus optout. As you consider what to do here, I would urge the Committee 

to consider, you know, the various balances. On the one hand, you 

have the interests of legitimate businesses to communicate with potential customers. 

On the other hand, you have the interest that was talked about 

earlier, the consumers’ interest in not being bothered. Someone 

once said, well, this is merely a nuisance, why are we even getting 

involved? At least with regard to the criminal provisions here, we 

at the Department believe that this legislation addresses the most 

difficult types of e-mail to address, and that is the fraudulent and 

the pornographic. 

And for that reason, we are very supportive. 

Mr. RUBIN. Mr. Green, if I can also address that. Again, you have 

to try a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate e-mailers. 

Legitimate companies are going to follow whatever rules Congress 

sets down, even if they are burdensome, even if they make it more 

difficult for them to communicate with their customers. 

Spammers aren’t. They are going to ignore whatever rules Congress puts in place, if they feel that it diminishes their ability to 

communicate with consumers. So they—so clearly if you put an 

opt-in regime in place, you are going to discriminate against legitimate companies who are going to have to bear higher costs, or may 

not have their e-mail—may not be able to use e-mail to market at 

all. 

You may force a lot of the spammers overseas, in which case, as 

was pointed out numerous times, there is even less ability to enforce U.S. Laws overseas than we have to enforce U.S. Law. 

And then again, most of the spam that we are dealing with here 

is fraudulent. Sixty-seven percent plus has some indicia of fraud or 

misleading—either in the subject line or the ‘‘from’’ line or even in 

the body of the e-mail. 

That, it seems to us, needs to be where the activity, law enforcement activity and others is focused. 

Mr. GREEN. I understand what you have said. Respond, though, 

to the argument that someone who goes to his or her laptop in the 

morning doesn’t want to have to, each time they see an item of 

spam, take it up, take a look at it, decide whether or not they want 

to receive future solicitations from this source, and then take action 

to block them. Why should someone be forced to do that in response to the problem? 

Mr. RUBIN. Well, you are not forcing a consumer to do that. I 

think what you see here—first of all, if you get rid of two-thirds 

of the spam that is fraudulent, already you have cut down significantly on the amount of e-mail that a consumer is going to receive. 

42

Once you get rid of all of that, there are presumably interests 

that consumers have in receiving good deals. For example, if I am 

looking for airfare, I probably, if I am looking to go away for the 

weekend, I wouldn’t be upset to see a cheap air fare e-mailed to 

me, or as Mr. Murray pointed out in his testimony, if Sears sends 

me an e-mail regarding a discount for a lube job at Sears, that is 

something that most consumers would not be upset about. 

So again, once you get rid of all of the bad stuff, you get rid of 

the porn, you get rid of the fraudulent stuff, then you know at that 

point, I think Congress can come back and reconsider. There are 

studies under the legislation which provide for the FTC and others 

to look at this issue and say, are consumers now content with their 

e-mail, or are they still begun inundated with fraud, or are they 

upset with continued legitimate offers? 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. Mr. Murray, respond, if you would, to 

the argument made by Mr. Rubin, that if we are not careful, our 

approach will simply force spammers beyond the reach of our law, 

beyond the reach of our territorial jurisdiction. 

Mr. MURRAY. I think we run that risk with any law we enact in 

this space. I don’t have a good answer for that question, but I think 

that question doesn’t differ whether or not we are talking opt-in, 

opt-out, criminal penalties. We are still, in a sense, going to send 

people abroad. 

If I can clarify one thing, which is, opt-in does not prohibit marketers from sending you materials if you request it from those marketers. It just means that we start with the presumption that you 

can’t send me something if I have made the decision to—rather, if 

I have not made the decision to opt in. 

What it says is, if I go to an airline site, even if I am still protected by the opt-in, if I go to an airline site and say, I would like 

weekly e-mail alerts about what your fares might be this week, 

they can still send those fares to you. 

Anybody that you request information from, they can still send 

it. Well, I will end there. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you. The gentleman from California, Mr. 

Schiff. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, I will waive my time. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Feeney. 

Mr. FEENEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to leave aside, 

if I can for the panelists, the questions about fraud and pornography, because I think they are fairly easy cases, at least in my 

mind. I am more concerned about the junk, and criminalizing, in 

effect, unrequested or unsolicited junk. 

You know, I am a freedom lover, but I am also part of the leaveus-alone coalition, and the most bothersome about junk spam is 

that it is terribly annoying; it tends to shut down your ability to 

navigate your computer. 

Having said that, it is not—you know, I do believe that we have 

the right to regulate these things. I mean, a merchant is free to 

hawk his wares historically in any free market, but they are not 

free to harass you while you walk up and down the open market 

place. We have rules with respect to fax machine use, and telephone use. 

43

And so now we are trying to apply the old principles to a new 

technology, to continue to open markets of commerce and advertising, but to do it in a legitimate way. And Mr. Rubin from the 

Chamber wants to draw a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate, but everyone starting in a business, presumably, unless 

they are an outright con artist, things they intend to get legitimate 

1 day. 

And the way that they are going to do it is to start selling discount watches on the street, or in this case, use spam to pierce into 

the marketplace. 

I want to know what the current status of technology is with respect to what the ISPs are capable of doing. I guess I want to ask 

this question: Why should the Government get involved in regulating this at all? If my ISP has the ability to insist on all of the 

information that this bill does, identification—you know, one of the 

things that we require for a fictitious entity to do business, corporations in our States is that they have to register their corporation, establish a resident agent so we know a physical place where 

we can serve them papers, haul them into court and subject them 

to either civil or criminal penalties, if necessary. 

Does an ISP have the technical ability to do that today, or something equivalent to that, and if so, why would I want the Federal 

Government to regulate this at all? 

For example, we have a choice of where we go to malls to shop. 

I don’t want to go to a mall that has dozens of solicitors and panhandlers and people harassing me with their wares; I want to be 

able to get in and out of the stores that I want, pursue the mall 

on a casual basis. Some people like to shop at Tiffany; some people 

like to shop at flea markets. 

So if my ISP wants to be open to spam, so be it. If I have an 

ISP that is going to be very jealous of my time and ability to navigate exactly where I want to go, why can’t they do that? 

So for any of the panelists, I will open that up. What is the technological capability? Are we there yet? Is an ISP going to be able 

to have this technology pretty quick? If so, then the question would 

be, why the Federal Government would want to get involved at all. 

Mr. RUBIN. Well, Mr. Feeney, I will take a first crack at that. 

First, ISPs currently block literally billions of e-mails a day. AOL, 

in and of itself blocks somewhere over a billion e-mails a day. 

The ISPs I think need help, because, they can’t identify fraudulent e-mail. You can identify some bulk e-mailers, but if someone 

is using an open relay to hide their identity, to hide the source 

where the e-mail came from, an ISP doesn’t know if that is a legitimate or illegitimate e-mail. They don’t want to block something 

that you are getting from your mother, but they do want to block 

something that you are getting from, you know, some spammer. 

I think that they do need additional tools. Additionally, we are 

seeing more and more competition among ISPs. ISPs are now running ads: We block all spam. We block most spam. So I think the 

consumers are getting more and more choices as the technology advances. There is now a challenge-response technology that some 

ISPs are starting to use, which will challenge any bulk e-mail. And 

if they don’t get a certain password back, they won’t allow the email in. 

44

So there are technological solutions, but the ISPs still don’t have 

all of technology they need. Plus technology, I don’t think, can solve 

all of the problems. You still have the fraudsters who, even if they 

don’t hide their identify, if they send a fraudulent offer, a pyramid 

scheme or something, you still need law enforcement to have the 

ability to come in and protect the consumers. 

Mr. FEENEY. Well, I would like to hear from the Attorney General for a second. Now Mr. Rubin did great there until the last second, when he got right back into fraud. I want to go back, because 

that is an easy question. I want to go back to junk. If you can answer this, Mr. Attorney General, of what technological capabilities 

are out there, because I am interested in this. 

And then, finally, if we allow ISPs to determine exactly what is 

legitimate, and what is not legitimate advertising, are we walking 

toward a monopoly threshold on Internet advertising? Is that something that we have to be careful of? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Well, Mr. Feeney I want tell the Attorney General that you promoted me. I am going to have to just jump back 

to fraud just for a moment, because our understanding, from talking to the ISPs, is that they can block e-mail if they want to. They 

just can’t block that which is fraudulently routed, purposefully concealing the identity. 

This bill, at least with regard to the criminal provisions, does not 

address the issue that you are getting at. That is a decision for the 

ISP. They are not common carriers. ISPs are private networks. 

They can carry your e-mail or not carry your e-mail, particularly 

if you are violating the terms of your contact with the ISP. They 

will probably have an incentive to terminate that contract. 

But, if they are getting around the terms by using technology, 

the false routers, false headers and the like, that is something that 

can’t be addressed. That is a gap that the criminal provisions in 

title 2 attempt to fill. 

Mr. MURRAY. If I can briefly respond. Filtering technologies do 

offer some promise. The problem is that filtering technologies are 

both overbroad and underbroad at the same time. For instance, I 

try to set up filters on my e-mail system at work. And the problem 

was that it was filtering some spam, but it was also filtering my 

colleagues messages I found out a month later, when they were 

very angry at me for not showing up at meetings and the like. 

And so I think Representative Schiff has his finger on something, 

which is an ADB label or something like that, which makes it easier for ISPs to filter, may go a long ways to making those filters 

more effective. 

The problem is if consumers want something like cable modem 

service, which is the Cadillac of high speed Internet, gives you 

video and other things that other forms of service can’t do, you 

have really only got one choice. There is no market, very few communities in the country where you can get multiple ISPs to develop 

a market for tools. Maybe an ADB label could work for consumers. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman’s time has expired. Mr. Burr, even 

though you are not a Member of the Subcommittee, you are a primary sponsor. After the Members of the Subcommittee exhaust our 

line of questioning, we will be glad to hear briefly from you on your 

bill. 

45

Mr. BURR. I thank the Chair. 

Mr. COBLE. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Chabot. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Rubin, or Joe, let 

me ask you if I can, first of all, you had mentioned in your testimony that some ISPs are now advertising that they block all spam 

or some spam or whatever. How effective are some of these, especially the ones that say that they can block all spam? Is there any 

indication that some are pretty successful in that? 

Mr. RUBIN. I don’t know how successful, specifically how successful they are now. I know that AOL has been cited numerous times 

as being a very effective blocker. But my AOL account still gets a 

lot of spam. So, you know, I think every day they are spending 

more money. They are really—they are expending more resources, 

they are expending their technology, they are trying to get to the 

point where they can block everything. 

But, again, because they don’t always know where things come 

from, or if someone wants a particular e-mail or doesn’t, it is very 

difficult for them to necessarily block everything. 

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Murray, would your organization have anything they want to add to that? Are you aware of any companies 

that are particularly successful at blocking, or are they all having 

difficulties in that area. 

Mr. MURRAY. I can only speak anecdotally. I have heard that 

Earthlink does quite a good job. They do quite a good job of blocking spam. And AOL needs to be commended for the fact that they 

get 2.4 billion spam messages every day, some days. That is an 

enormous volume of spam. To try to figure out what spam you pass 

through and what spam you block, that is a mystery to me. 

We go through, in the article that I left, in the Consumer Reports 

article—we actually review some filtering tools that consumers can 

use, and some filtering tools that ISPs use, but I can’t speak with 

great expertise. 

Mr. CHABOT. You mentioned AOL is to be commended, because 

they receive 2.4 billion spam—could you complete that. How successful are they? 

Mr. MURRAY. I can’t speak to what percentage of spam actually 

gets through. Again, anecdotally, I know that quite a lot of spam 

still goes through, because of the techniques that spammers are 

using to evade the filters. If they know that Viagra is going to 

block them, they do V space, I space, A, et cetera. That is how they 

evade the filtering tools. But, what percentage is getting through, 

I don’t know. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay. Thank you. Let me ask you again, Mr. Rubin, 

on this one. I know that your organization represents companies 

that are very large and others that are mid size and very small 

companies—some are emerging businesses. Do you have any concerns about, you know, the newer companies that are coming out, 

especially those that are emerging that we should take their point 

of view into consideration when we are deciding on any changes in 

this legislation or whether it ought to be passed as is or whatever? 

Mr. RUBIN. Absolutely. That is one of the reasons that we focused on the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate companies and e-mail. There are, you know, new companies, new products that companies want to be able to sell, perhaps on-line, that, 

46

you know, we are concerned that overbroad legislation will limit 

their ability to communicate with potential customers. That actually raises one interesting question from Senator McCain’s amendment on the Senate side. He actually proposed an amendment 

which would give the FTC authority to go after not the bulk 

spammers themselves, but the companies that actually sell the 

products. 

What usually happens is companies will hire—a Viagra company 

will hire a spammer to sell their stuff. Even if they are a semi-legitimate company, they are selling the Iraqi cards, for example, 

they will hire a spammer to sell the stuff. 

The one thing that is common about all spam, is there has to be 

a way to get the money out of the consumer. So the McCain 

amendment empowers the FTC, who has a long history of being 

able to trace the money—empowers them to be able to go back and 

find—trace the money, and find the actual company that hired the 

spammer. We think solutions like that will really help this legislation become much more effective. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. One of the particulars of this legislation 

is the labeling and whether it is, you know, on the pornographic 

site is what I wanted to ask you about. 

Would these particular folks that are trying to spam relative to 

pornography, would they have to self-label? Is that the way that it 

would work? It would have to have ADT, or they wouldn’t be allowed to do it at all? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Under the current draft of the bill, the FTC is 

directed to promulgate rules about where the label would be placed 

in this unsolicited commercial e-mail that has, you know, the pornographic material in it. 

Mr. CHABOT. Okay. Thank you very much. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Virginia, 

Mr. Goodlatte. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I have an 

opening statement that I would ask to be made part of the record. 

Mr. COBLE. Without objection. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. I want to also acknowledge your note that I had 

neglected Mr. Murray in my earlier comments. I don’t intend to do 

that now. 

First of all, Mr. Murray, I want to say that certainly it was not 

to snub you. I am a subscriber to Consumer Reports, and have read 

your—in fact, prior to today’s hearing I had read your very helpful 

presentation on ways that you can fight spam. I think it is a very 

useful benefit to consumers and discusses the issue very well. 

But, I have to take very, very strong issue with one of the conclusions that you and your organization have taken. That is that a 

scheme of opt-in, coupled with a private right of action and class 

action lawsuits is a way to solve this problem. I think that would 

be a nightmare for legitimate American businesses. It would be a 

great hinderance to the legitimate uses of the Internet. It would be 

particularly a problem for small and growing businesses that are 

out looking for new customers and want to make them aware of the 

products that they have. 

I use e-mail extensively. I rarely am exposed to the pop-up ads 

and other things, because I pretty much utilize it. I will tell you 

47

that the spam that I receive is overwhelmingly from illegitimate 

businesses. The things that I find offensive. Occasionally I will get 

something from a legitimate business. I will delete it or tell them 

not to send me any more if they persist. That seems to work very 

well with a legitimate business. 

But with an illegitimate business, you are right. That action of 

opting-out does let them know that they are—they have a live one 

on the hook. And I think the only solution to that is very strong 

criminal provisions that are provided in this legislation, coupled 

with a great deal of international work that is going to have to be 

done to get other countries cooperating with us in that area. 

Now, I think there is a big difference between this and the fax 

law that you cited. And you are correct, it costs the advertiser 

money to send that junk mail to my mailbox. But with the fax, it 

costs the consumer money to receive even that very first fax. They 

have got to pay for the paper and the toner that goes over their 

line in order to get rid of that. And so to criminalize the very use 

of fax machines for commercial purposes was for a very different 

reason than we are addressing the issue of this form of communications. 

With regard to the issue of class action lawsuits, I think that 

would be an abomination. We would have a situation where the legitimate businesses that we want to encourage to share valuable, 

useful information with consumers, and who may go wrong some 

of the time, in terms of whatever scheme might be devised, to face 

the fact that they would then face a lawsuit, not just for the one 

angry consumer, but for the 999,000 or 2 million or 10 million 

other consumers who just did what I did, that is, just deleted that 

ad or sent a request for an opt-out, suddenly we are all made a 

part of a class action lawsuit as plaintiffs, and what happens is, we 

will all get some nominal benefit from it, because we only suffered 

a very nominal loss by receiving it, and some attorney will, as we 

have seen in the class action lawsuit litigation which this Committee passed out, which the House of Representatives passed recently, some attorney will get 5 or 10 million, $15 million in attorney fees for having successfully extorted this particular legitimate 

business for doing that. 

And the end result will be that legitimate businesses, which are 

very careful, as Mr. Rubin has already pointed out, to not offend 

consumers because they want them as customers, these legitimate 

businesses will suffer, consumers will receive less information, and 

the people that we are really having a problem with, the pornographers, the overseas spammers, the people sending all of the kind 

of information that the Chairman cited, they are going to continue 

on their merry way. Because, the only way to get at them is not 

from a class action lawsuit, they don’t have the deep pockets that 

will be hurt by this, and they are going to go to another country, 

another location, another identity as soon as they see the slightest 

hint of smell. 

I have worked with the Federal Communication Commission on 

the fax law. We actually got a massive fine imposed upon a New 

York fax operation. They moved to Canada just as soon as that 

happened. We have got to work on the criminal aspects of this law 

and go after those folks, get them extradited to this country and 

48

put them in prison. And I don’t—I think, Mr. Chairman, I would 

like to give them a brief opportunity to respond to my diatribe, but 

my objection to your approach in terms of civil litigation by private 

individuals, particularly in the form of a class action, is, I think, 

very misguided. 

Mr. MURRAY. Representative Goodlatte, I appreciate your 

subscribership and helping to pay my salary. 

With respect—I think we actually agree a hundred percent that, 

as I said in my opening statement, number one, we need to deal 

with the criminal and fraudulent aspects to spam. I think that is 

absolutely, as Mr. Rubin said, we are talking about two-thirds of 

spam. 

That would be step one in dealing with this spam problem. But, 

as I also said, I don’t think consumers’ annoyance ends with spam. 

And, you know the difference between the legitimate business and 

illegitimate business is a very fine line. And a legitimate business 

or businesses is legitimate until it decides it is illegitimate. 

Recently I found out that Hooked on Phonics, a company, I used 

their products when I was 3 and 4 and 5 years old, they were selling—after posting a privacy policy which said that they would not 

pass consumers e-mail addresses on to people, they turned around 

and sold those e-mails address out the back door. 

That is a reputable business. They have an interest in an ongoing business. As for the fact that the junk fax law is different, you 

are saying that people pay for toner, they pay for paper. The fact 

is that consumers pay for ISPs’ bandwidth; they don’t have those 

businesses out of the goodness of their hearts. Consumers pay for 

ISPs when they put in filtering tools. So we are paying for those 

things in the end. 

Just to wrap up on the class action point. Like you, we are completely opposed to coupon settlements as you alluded to—these attorneys that are collecting $5 million while consumers get a coupon 

or $5 off of their next ice cream cone. 

Maybe what we need to do to protect legitimate businesses, because I do believe that class action enforcement is really the only 

way we are going to clean this up, maybe what we need is to do 

‘‘three strikes—you are out’’ sort of thing, where you give people 

one chance, you give them two chances, if they continue to do it, 

then the third time around you are going to allow for that enforcement. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I will just close by saying I disagree with that final conclusion about class actions and yield back. 

Mr. RUBIN. Can I respond to that real quickly? The legislation 

does require ISPs to establish a pattern and practice to bring suit. 

So in effect, a lot of Mr. Murray’s concern is addressed. 

Mr. COBLE. I have one more question. If others have questions, 

we will have another round. And then Mr. Burr, we will hear from 

you. 

Mr. Murray, since Mr. Goodlatte has placed you in the bullseye 

on the target, and since you are there, I will put this question to 

you. 

The bill deals only with commercial e-mail but would not prevent 

what some consumers consider unwanted e-mail including, for example, political e-mail or fund-raising e-mail—you likely are aware 

49

that some political activist groups on both sides of the political 

spectrum have expressed some concern that overbroad spam laws 

may possibly infringe, or may probably infringe on their ability to 

use e-mail to communicate and to do fund-raising. What say you 

to that? 

Mr. MURRAY. I share those concerns, Chairman Coble. As I alluded to earlier, the law has also made a distinction between political speech on the one hand and commercial speech on the other. 

While I think it is acceptable for a spam bill to cover commercial 

speech, I don’t think it can bring political speech within its purview 

without violating the Constitution. 

Mr. COBLE. Anybody want to—Mr. Rubin or Mr. Moschella, want 

to add to that? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Mr. Chairman, I would just say that we share 

the concern that regulation of political speech would venture into 

an area that would be subject to—that would be constitutionally infirm. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, gentlemen. The gentleman from Virginia, 

Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would this legislation, 

Mr. Moschella, have any effect on the so-called banner ads or ads 

placed by the ISP? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. It would not. 

Mr. SCOTT. What about placing cookies on your computer? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. No. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is there any way we can stop that, Mr. Murray? Is 

placing cookies on your computer, just because you opened an email, they have a marker on your computer. Is there any effort to 

get at that? 

Mr. MURRAY. Not that I know of. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Rubin, some of us don’t think fraud is the only 

problem going on, just the volume in itself, whether it is legitimate 

or so-called illegitimate. Is it your position that businesses ought 

to have an unlimited right to spam, so long as it is an honest advertisement? 

Mr. RUBIN. Well, I don’t know that we—that any business wants 

to send unlimited e-mail. But we are simply trying to draw a distinction, again, between the legitimate and illegitimate. If there 

continues to be a problem with legitimate companies, if they don’t 

honor the opt-out, for example, or if they—if they try and use 

fraudulent or misleading header information or try to get around 

ISPs—— Mr. SCOTT. I am talking about someone who advertises that they 

have a product and they want to sell it, and they honestly represent themselves as the vender, is it your position that an honest 

vendor and honest vendors out there have an unlimited right to 

spam? 

Mr. RUBIN. They have—if they obtain your e-mail legitimately, 

they have the—we don’t think that they should be limited in terms 

of how they communicate with their customers. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Moschella, we talked about the right to anonymous speech. Has the Department of Justice done an analysis on 

the constitutionality of the identifiers that are listed in the bill? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. With regard to the pornographic e-mails? 

50

Mr. SCOTT. No. The fact that you have to identify yourself. 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. We believe that this statute is, on its face, a 

constitutional statute. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is there, within the Department of Justice, an analysis? 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. I don’t have the specific analysis to share with 

you. 

Mr. SCOTT. Can you get one? Because there are many people that 

have gone back and forth on this, and have concluded that it is 

clearly unconstitutional. Some cases have specifically applied to emails. I understand there is an injunction in at least one jurisdiction. And so we need to work on that. 

Mr. MOSCHELLA. Mr. Scott, I would point out that I believe in 

the record of the full Committee in testimony that was heard on 

this issue last Congress, that there is a CRS report that at least 

addresses the pornographic e-mail criminal provision. 

And in that opinion the Congressional Research Service concluded that it was Constitutional. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I want to point 

out, as Mr. Murray has indicated, that the prohibition in the bill 

on class actions makes any private right of action virtually meaningless, because as it has been pointed out, the person who finally 

gets to court, you can give him a $200 or $300 check, it is just a 

cost of doing business. 

Without a meaningful class action provision, any individual right 

of action, I believe, is meaningless. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the gentleman. The gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I almost did not make this hearing. And I guess I am a little bit sorry 

about being late. However, my being here may not be as productive 

as it should be, because I don’t believe in any of this. I do not believe there should be any limits on the use of e-mail, fax, telephone 

calls or anything. 

You know, I am constantly irritated by the fact that we all want 

as much as we can get in new technology and conveniences, and 

the minute that we have access to it, then we start wanting to censor, to limit, to give new definitions. I don’t know what spam is. 

And I am not going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out 

what it is. I believe that we should not try and create a definition 

of spam and decide what is valuable, what is not valuable, what 

is meaningful, what is not meaningful. 

If there are questions of fraud, and pornography, we have laws 

that deal with that in certain ways. And if we need to model laws 

consistent with what we do about mail fraud, pornography in the 

mail, that is okay. 

But, beyond that, because you don’t like junk or spam, or jokes 

or too much advertising, I am just not in the business of that kind 

of censorship. And I just have no use for this at all. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the lady. Mr. Burr, you have been patiently 

standing by. And without objection, we will be glad to hear from 

you briefly. 

Mr. BURR. I thank the Chairman for that. I thank the gentlelady. 

Her comments are very appropriate. I think it is the reason that 

51

we need to have hearings on this. It is the reason that it needs to 

be brought up, is because there are differing opinions. 

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to ask questions of your witnesses, 

but I can tell from just sitting and listening, that this has been invaluable to your Members, as it has been to me to hear from them. 

I think it also explains the difficult balance that we try to 

reached with this legislation. We are not here to interpret what 

should go through or shouldn’t go through. We are here to be a little more specific on legal and illegal. We are here to design some 

rules that everybody understands. But to protect the rights of those 

businesses who use this as a valuable business tool. 

And to the customers to evaluate the value of it based upon 

whether they purchase or not, and not to infringe or limit that in 

any way. But, by the same standpoint, to set down a marker to 

those that illegally spam, to say that we are after them. 

There is one thing that I have learned, Mr. Chairman. That is, 

that as technology gets better, our challenges get more abundant. 

This is another example of that. By the same standpoint, I have 

learned that those who want to be illegal will continue to strive to 

find ways around anything, anything, that we build to filter. 

So though I applaud the efforts of AOL and many of the ISPs to 

filter out, we can’t walk away and believe that by their efforts 

alone, we have filtered out 100 percent of that unsolicited e-mail 

that we would classify or that might be classified by the American 

people as information they didn’t want to receive. 

That is why I believe that we have struck the right balance. It 

is not perfect. Little legislation that I have worked on since I have 

been here has been perfect. But it is a step in the right direction. 

I think we do little damage. 

And I would also make the last point. My hope is that my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee will not increase the ability for 

individuals to sue under class action. I think that that submarines 

the legislation. I can see us if that were to pass at some point in 

the future having to defend as legal the solicitation by lawyers 

through e-mail as they solicit the members of their class action 

suits. 

That is not a world that I necessarily want to develop out of this 

legislation. I thank the Chairman. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank the gentleman. I want to thank the witnesses, including the Attorney General, who had to leave us early 

for your testimony. I think it has been a good hearing. We appreciate your contribution. 

This concludes the legislative hearing on H.R. 2214, the ‘‘Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act of 2003.’’ The record will remain 

open for 1 week. 

Thank you for your cooperation, and the Subcommittee stands 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(53)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BOB GOODLATTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today’s hearing on this important legislation 

to combat spam. I joined Mr. Burr, Chairman Sensenbrenner, and Chairman Tauzin 

to introduce the RID Spam Act in order to combat the growing problems that spam 

poses to businesses and consumers. 

It is estimated that about half of all email currently sent is spam. AOL filters 

about 1.6 million junk email messages per minute. Last year, 261 billion pieces of 

spam were sent. By the end of this year, it is estimated that 1 trillion pieces of 

spam will be sent. 

In addition to the exponential increase in the volume of spam, most spam is 

fraudulent. An FTC report published on April 30, 2003, found that 66% of all spam 

contained false information in the ‘‘from’’ line, the ‘‘subject’’ line, or in the message 

text. Furthermore, 96% of all spam analyzed that related to investment and business opportunities contained false information in the ‘‘from’’ line, the ‘‘subject’’ line, 

or in the message text. 

Even more disturbing is the fact that much spam contains sexually explicit material. This graphic material flows into the in-boxes of innocent Americans daily and 

attacks users when they open their email accounts and view their messages. Unknowing consumers who do not wish to look at such graphic pictures are often 

tricked into opening the messages because the true nature of the email is disguised 

by false information in the ‘‘subject’’ and ‘‘from’’ lines. 

It is clear that spam is not just a nuisance anymore. It is a real problem that affects real people and real businesses. Business groups estimate that $9 billion will 

be lost in productivity due to spam this year alone. Consumers bear the costs in 

the form of the time it takes to delete unwanted messages and in the slowdown of 

Internet traffic; telecommunications companies must provide additional bandwidth 

to compensate for the bandwidth used up by the increased volume of spam messages; ISPs must devote employees, time, and technological research and development to combat spam. 

H.R. 2214, the RID Spam Act, is a common sense approach to the spam problem. 

It requires that all commercial email include (1) identification that the message is 

a solicitation, (2) a valid email address to which consumers can opt-out of future 

commercial email messages, (3) clear notice of the opportunity of consumers to opt 

out of future commercial email messages, and (4) a valid street address for service 

of process. 

The bill also prohibits spammers from sending email after the consumer has opted 

out and prohibits spammers from harvesting email addresses from online databases 

and then sending spam messages to those email addresses. 

The RID Spam act makes it a crime to falsify the identity of the sender and to 

send unsolicted, sexually explicit email without the required warning labels. In addition, the bill provides state attorneys general, ISPs, the FTC and the DOJ with 

the necessary criminal and civil tools to enforce the bill and maintains the ability 

of states to enact and enforce state fraud laws against spammers. 

One essential characteristic of H.R. 2214 is the technology-friendly nature of the 

bill. It is clear that any successful attempt to combat spam must protect the ability 

of ISPs and small businesses to continue to develop technological solutions to the 

problem. Small businesses and ISPs have increasingly developed new and innovative methods and technologies to combat spam, including filtering technologies and 

techniques to determine whether a real person or a computer program is on the 

other side of the line. H.R. 2214 protects these technological efforts by specifically 

stating that the bill does not affect the legality of ISPs’ policies of blocking email 

54

messages. Protecting the ability of businesses to create innovative technological solutions to combat unsolicited email is crucial to winning the fight against spam. 

I believe that the RID Spam act is a significant step in the fight against spam. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses today regarding this legislation. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SHEILA JACKSON LEE, A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, I thank you for convening this legislative hearing today to hear testimony on the ‘‘Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act 

of 2003,’’ also known as the ‘‘RID Spam Act.’’

Once again we are considering legislation that requires us to strike a balance between personal liberties and adequate regulation. 

Unsolicited Commercial E-mails, commonly known as ‘‘spam,’’ have become a nuisance to Internet users and a source of great concern for parents, schools, public 

libraries, and other entities trying to control the internet content reaching minors. 

Spam is saturating the Internet with multiple copies of the same electronic message in an effort to force the message on people who would not otherwise have chosen to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising that is often promoting 

untrustworthy products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. 

There many reasons why proponents of this legislation seek to regulate spam. 

One reason is that spam cost the recipient more than it cost the sender. For example, America On-Line was spending 5,000 per day of connect time to erase spam 

messages at a substantial cost to their subscribers. The spam senders, on the other 

hand, were spending approximately $100 per day to send their messages. Another 

reason is that a substantial portion of the spam content may be illegal. For example, 

some spam advertisements offer access to child pornography which is undoubtedly 

illegal in the United States. 

The impact that spam may have on America’s children is of particular concern 

to myself and many others. Most internet service providers offer a filtering system 

to prevent inappropriate material from reaching minors. However, no filtering system provides a 100% guarantee of protection. I strongly believe that spam advertisements, and the internet as a whole, should be regulated to prevent pornographic advertisements or other unwanted materials from being accessed by children. 

It is at this point of regulation that a balance must be struck. Spam e-mails may 

be a nuisance and the products they promote my be objectionable to some of us, but 

that does not give the Members of the Subcommittee carte-blanche to impose upon 

the personal liberties of Americans who purchase spam e-mail products. As the Senate considered similar legislation to control spam, several regulatory schemes were 

proposed. The ideas included an email tax, an international treaty, and a ‘‘no bulk 

e-mail’’ option in email applications that would bounce the spam advertisement back 

to the sender. Bill Gates submitted written testimony in the Senate recommending 

new and improved legislation and enforcement paired with increased efforts at industry self-regulation. In the Federal Trade Commission’s Orson Swindle complained that self-regulation has not been effective among email marketers and that 

improved technological solutions may be the only answer. 

Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, I am a proponent of controlling spam 

and protecting America’s children from inappropriate content on the web. I am also 

a proponent of personal liberties and protecting all American’s right to read and 

view legal websites of their choosing. I look forward to hearing the testimony of our 

witnesses today and learning how we can legislate spam without infringing on personal liberties.

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LETTER FROM WILLIAM MOSCHELLA, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF

LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

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