Murkowski anti-spam bill could be a problem for ISPs

Sat May 24 07:59:02 UTC 1997

> * Commercial e-mail must be tagged with "advertisement"
> * All ISPs must provide tag filtering on inbound mail
> * Commercial e-mail must provide a real return address, and accept remove
>   requests.  They have 48 hours to act on a remove request.
> * The FTC can discipline misbehaving ISPs.
> * Various penalties for unsigned ads, for ISPs that don't provide 
>   filtering, for spammers who continue to send ads after receiving a remove.

Seems to me it's even worse than this.  Seems to me that the bill, while
well intentioned, could be used by Spammers to say "See, it's OK to SPAM,
it says so here.  We put the word advertisement on the subject line.  See,
if people don't want to see it, the law says their ISP filters it.  We're
doing exactly what the law says we should.  It condones SPAM."

Or did I miss something about this law?

Owen