hijacked by a spammer who used it to send ads for a pornographic Web site, he
was flooded with replies.
“Some said, ‘I’m interested, but I want more information,’ ” recalled
Feldman, a Montgomery County Democrat.
“Some said, ‘Please remove me from your distribution list.’ And some – the
people from my district who knew me – said, ‘Have you gone crazy?’ “
Feldman had not gone crazy. He was another victim of the computer worms
that have put countless e-mail accounts at the service of spammers whose junk
e-mail is driving computer users crazier every day.
His experience – which he described as “a potential catastrophe for a
political career” – gave an extra push to a bill the General Assembly enacted
Monday night in the frantic closing hours of the session.
It would give Maryland one of the toughest state anti-spam laws, one
fine-tuned to combat spammers’ latest tactics, including the one that caught
Feldman.
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“Maryland now has the strictest and most powerful anti-spam law in the
country,” said Nicholas J. Graham, a spokesman for America Online, which
helped draft the bill and lobbied for it. He said only Virginia’s anti-spam
law, which took effect in July, has similar sweep.
The Maryland measure, which will take effect Oct. 1 if Gov. Robert L.
Ehrlich Jr. signs it, as expected, would be the first state anti-spam statute
enacted since the federal CAN-SPAM law took effect Jan. 1.
Like CAN-SPAM, the Maryland Spam Deterrence Act would not ban unsolicited
commercial e-mail. Instead, it would prohibit tricks that spammers use to hide
their identities, such as relaying spam from someone else’s e-mail account and
falsifying return addresses. It would also outlaw sending e-mail to random
addresses harvested from the Web.
Del. Neil F. Quinter, a Howard County Democrat who sponsored the
legislation with Sen. Robert J. Garagiola, a Montgomery County Democrat, said
the bill was crafted to keep up with the fast-evolving tactics used to send
spam.
“There’s a constant technological arms race between the spammers and the
Internet service providers,” said Quinter, a lawyer specializing in technology
and telecommunications.
The Maryland measure would impose penalties of up to five years in prison –
10 years for a person previously convicted of a spam violation – and permit
the state attorney general to seek civil penalties of $25,000 a day.
“A lot of Internet service providers have found that lawsuits are not
enough to stop the spammers,” Garagiola said. “This will make a spammer think
twice, because he can actually go to prison.”
By permitting the attorney general and local police to file charges, the
measure would beef up the forces arrayed against senders of illegal bulk
e-mail. “It’s basically putting more anti-spam cops on the street,” Garagiola
said.
To be covered by the Maryland measure, a spammer merely has to send illegal
spam to Marylanders. Virginia has charged two North Carolina men with
violating its spam law, a prosecution Garagiola and Quinter described as a
model for Maryland.
Like other e-mail providers, AOL has become alarmed by spam, which has
become so pervasive that customers are canceling their accounts.
To publicize its longstanding anti-spam efforts, the company is about to
announce which of its customers has won a 2002 Porsche Boxster sports car –
confiscated from a California spammer who couldn’t pay the judgment AOL won
from him.
Sophisticated filters used by the Virginia-based company block about 2
billion spam messages a day – about 80 percent of all incoming e-mail, said
Graham, the AOL spokesman.
Every day, AOL temporarily shuts down the service of hundreds, sometimes
thousands, of customers whose accounts have been hijacked by spammers, he
said.
That’s what happened to Feldman, but he had his service turned backed on
quickly.
“In all candor, I talked to one of the AOL lobbyists in Annapolis, and he
took care of it,” Feldman said.