Media Watchdog Feels NBC Misinformed Public About Porn Spam
by Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
August 25, 2005
(AgapePress) - A media watchdog group is applauding NBC for tackling the problem of "porn spam"-- the seemingly endless barrage of smutty, often sexually explicit cyber-solicitations that come uninvited into e-mail users' inboxes. On a recent Dateline NBC report, correspondent John Hockenberry provided some useful information on the topic; but Bob Peters of Morality in Media felt the program failed to get certain facts about porn spam straight. "On the whole, the program was good," Peters says. The problem began, he contends, when the Dateline reporter indicated to viewers that sending pornographic unsolicited commercial e-mail is lawful in the United States, "and then he interviewed a supposed expert on fighting porn spam, [who] said that as long as the spammers put two words on the spam -- 'sexually explicit' -- it's perfectly legal."
The Morality in Media spokesman strongly disagrees. He points to the CAN-SPAM Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush a few years ago -- the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003" -- and notes that among its provisions are rules permitting Internet marketers to send unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) only as long as it contains valid subject line and header information, the sender's legitimate physical address, specified labels or subject line "tags" warning receivers of any adult content, and the means to opt out of receiving future e-mails from the sender.
According to Peters, simply adding the "Sexually Explicit" warning label does not make a porn spam message legal, contrary to the Dateline report's repeated assertion. "There are, I'd say, probably 10 different provisions that spammers have to comply with," he notes, "and without question, these porn spammers violate one or more of those provisions every time they send out spam."
The media activist says although the Dateline NBC reporter told viewers twice that the "sexually explicit" warning made porn spam legal, it takes a lot more than that for porn spammers to be in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. Also, he notes, a "sense of Congress" aspect of the legislation means that the bill must be weighed alongside other statutes dealing with porn and its distribution. In any case, Peters wants it to be clear to victims of this sort of obscene junk e-mail assault that most porn spammers are definitely operating outside the law.
Meanwhile, Morality in Media (MIM) wants porn spam victims to know that they are not helpless before the onslaught of these criminal e-mail marketers. The watchdog group encourages those receiving the offensive and unwanted e-mail solicitations to use MIM's new ObscenityCrimes.org website to report the porn websites being advertised through the e-mails. Also, MIM urges porn spam victims to complain to their Internet service provider (ISP) and the sender's, as well as to their U.S. attorney.
CAN-SPAM May Not Put a Lid on the Problem
Although the federal CAN-SPAM Act pre-empts existing state anti-spam laws that do not address fraud and makes it a misdemeanor to send spam with false routing information, and several other common spamming practices can make violating the act's provisions an "aggravated offense, a New York Times article published earlier this year suggested that the act has had little if any effect on the runaway proliferation of unsolicited commercial e-mail. In fact, the February 1 New York Times report indicated that the overall amount of spam on the Internet actually appears to have increased since the 2003 law was enacted.
Last June the Federal Trade Commission issued a formal report regarding the CAN-SPAM Act. That law required the federal agency to look into spam tagging -- the use of subject line tags warning e-mail users of explicit content. Ultimately, the FTC concluded such tagging would prove ineffective, largely because porn spammers that are out of compliance with the law already were deemed unlikely to add the explicit content warnings just because another law requires them to do so.
The FTC also looked at 20 state and national laws in Europe, Korea, and Japan that mandate the use of spam tags on UCE with pornographic content. Across the board, the commission found that none of these laws have been effective.
Some critics of the CAN-SPAM Act such as the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) say the legislation fails partly because it stops short of actually telling marketers not to send spam. Several activists and groups in the U.S. and abroad continue to call for stronger federal anti-spam legislation.
