15 U.S.C. § 7701 : US Code - Section 7701: Congressional findings and policy

Search 15 U.S.C. § 7701 : US Code - Section 7701: Congressional findings and policy

(a) Findings
The Congress finds the following:
(1) Electronic mail has become an extremely important and
popular means of communication, relied on by millions of
Americans on a daily basis for personal and commercial purposes.
Its low cost and global reach make it extremely convenient and
efficient, and offer unique opportunities for the development and
growth of frictionless commerce.
(2) The convenience and efficiency of electronic mail are
threatened by the extremely rapid growth in the volume of
unsolicited commercial electronic mail. Unsolicited commercial
electronic mail is currently estimated to account for over half
of all electronic mail traffic, up from an estimated 7 percent in
2001, and the volume continues to rise. Most of these messages
are fraudulent or deceptive in one or more respects.
(3) The receipt of unsolicited commercial electronic mail may
result in costs to recipients who cannot refuse to accept such
mail and who incur costs for the storage of such mail, or for the
time spent accessing, reviewing, and discarding such mail, or for
both.
(4) The receipt of a large number of unwanted messages also
decreases the convenience of electronic mail and creates a risk
that wanted electronic mail messages, both commercial and
noncommercial, will be lost, overlooked, or discarded amidst the
larger volume of unwanted messages, thus reducing the reliability
and usefulness of electronic mail to the recipient.
(5) Some commercial electronic mail contains material that many
recipients may consider vulgar or pornographic in nature.
(6) The growth in unsolicited commercial electronic mail
imposes significant monetary costs on providers of Internet
access services, businesses, and educational and nonprofit
institutions that carry and receive such mail, as there is a
finite volume of mail that such providers, businesses, and
institutions can handle without further investment in
infrastructure.
(7) Many senders of unsolicited commercial electronic mail
purposefully disguise the source of such mail.
(8) Many senders of unsolicited commercial electronic mail
purposefully include misleading information in the messages'
subject lines in order to induce the recipients to view the
messages.
(9) While some senders of commercial electronic mail messages
provide simple and reliable ways for recipients to reject (or
"opt-out" of) receipt of commercial electronic mail from such
senders in the future, other senders provide no such "opt-out"
mechanism, or refuse to honor the requests of recipients not to
receive electronic mail from such senders in the future, or both.
(10) Many senders of bulk unsolicited commercial electronic
mail use computer programs to gather large numbers of electronic
mail addresses on an automated basis from Internet websites or
online services where users must post their addresses in order to
make full use of the website or service.
(11) Many States have enacted legislation intended to regulate
or reduce unsolicited commercial electronic mail, but these
statutes impose different standards and requirements. As a
result, they do not appear to have been successful in addressing
the problems associated with unsolicited commercial electronic
mail, in part because, since an electronic mail address does not
specify a geographic location, it can be extremely difficult for
law-abiding businesses to know with which of these disparate
statutes they are required to comply.
(12) The problems associated with the rapid growth and abuse of
unsolicited commercial electronic mail cannot be solved by
Federal legislation alone. The development and adoption of
technological approaches and the pursuit of cooperative efforts
with other countries will be necessary as well.
(b) Congressional determination of public policy
On the basis of the findings in subsection (a), the Congress
determines that -
(1) there is a substantial government interest in regulation of
commercial electronic mail on a nationwide basis;
(2) senders of commercial electronic mail should not mislead
recipients as to the source or content of such mail; and
(3) recipients of commercial electronic mail have a right to
decline to receive additional commercial electronic mail from the
same source.