While civil libertarians struggled to prevent various international government clampdowns on Internet content, to keep the net free and open, a clear channel for all to use, direct marketing entrepreneurs were clogging the network with gigabytes of unsolicited commercial email. Ignorant or unscrupulous spammers brought down whole systems by forging return addresses so that bounced messages and flames were directed to other parties. This nonexistent address was picked out of the air by the spammer, who was required to deal with absolutely none of the return email.
Some folks theorize that legislation is the best way to fix the spam problem.
HR 1748 currently has 28 bipartisan co-sponsors. However some First Amendment activists are concerned over the free speech implications of this proposed legislation. Despite repeated complaints about usenet spam originating from Netcom's news servers, Netcom US has not only not acted to solve the problem but has ignored the growing public outcry against this problem. After several days of discussion of a potential UDP against Netcom US in a public forum they still remain silent, and the spam continues unabated. This action shall remain in effect until such time as Netcom US dramatically reduces the amount of usenet spam originating from its servers, and publicly declares a solid anti spam policy which includes giving it's abuse department the authority to suspend or terminate accounts that have been determined to be the source of abuse.