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The problem is enforcement-a problem with two sides. First, there's the cost of enforcement. Some states encourage the e-mai-blitzed citizen to sue. Realistically, that's not much of an option. How is the average person going to track down the mailer when the addresses and routes are faked? The states that take on the pursuit themselves are likely to be in the midst of draconian cuts in every department, so the question becomes, "Where does e-mail fit on their priorities list?" Dave Crocker, a Farber student, calls the state initiatives "research activity for a future federal law." His teacher adds, "You need somebody out there with the bank account, like the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC did a good job with fax spam." There's a Criminal Spam Act of 2003 wandering around Congress, but it's likely to undergo a name change with little chance of passing this year. There's also a bill sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) that was passed by the Senate Commerce Committee, and the two pieces of legislation need to be combined. But probably not this year. The second problem with anti-spam legislation concerns jurisdiction. As copyright and tax lawyers have discovered, the Internet can be somewhere, anywhere, and nowhere at the same time. A domain online is not the same as what we normally think of as a domain on terra firma. Do the spammed in Massachusetts get to sue somebody in Martinique? How? All the legal considerations might be moot if the technical challenge of locating the perpetrator overwhelms your resources. When a hacker shuts down businesses across the globe, costing economies millions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen, you can understand every country loosing the hounds. And the FBI or some other agency often locates the hacker because the search is given such high priority. But would the same effort be expended to track down junk mail processors?
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