Senate panels defer spam bill

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

Two state Senate committees yesterday shelved a bill aimed at dealing with unsolicited commercial e-mails, a widespread problem here and across the country for Internet users.

The Senate committees on Commerce, Consumer Protection and Housing and on Science, Arts and Technology decided to hold the measure after Gov. Linda Lingle's administration and others testified that a federal law already deals with spam and pre-empts state laws to address the issue.

President Bush signed the first national anti-spam legislation in December. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 prohibits faking the originating address of spam so that it cannot be traced and criminalizes combing Web pages for e-mail addresses to compose target lists.

The new law also requires marketers to give recipients the ability to opt out of receiving more e-mail and to honor those requests. It also requires pornographic e-mail marketing to be labeled and calls for the Federal Trade Commission to study the feasibility of maintaining a national "do-not-spam" list similar to the "do-not-call" registry, which consumers can use to block calls from certain telemarketers.

"The states and the (FTC) are engaged in a cooperative law enforcement effort to combat spam and are hopeful that the recently enacted CAN-SPAM Act will be an effective tool in accomplishing this mission," Stephen Levins of the state Office of Consumer Protection told the Senate committees yesterday.

Paul Oshiro, director of governmental affairs for Verizon, said the regulation of spam, which can be sent from outside Hawai'i, should be handled at the federal level.

The federal law, which took effect Jan. 1, was hailed as a good tool against spam, but many officials acknowledge that unsolicited e-mails will not disappear soon.

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.