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Prepared Witness Testimony The House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Legislative Efforts to Combat Spam
Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection
Prepared Statement of The Honorable Cliff Stearns Good morning. I too welcome our witnesses to this joint hearing of the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection and Telecommunications and Internet subcommittees. I am pleased to co-chair this hearing with Chairman Upton. No one disputes the great utility of e-mail, the fact that it has brought great efficiency and productivity gains, not only to our professional lives but also our personal lives. In a short period of time e-mail has become a critical, ubiquitous, inexpensive, and effective communication medium. It is a communications medium that at least according to one survey 3/4 of us are not willing to forgo for even telephone service. The evidence that e-mail is indeed the "killer application" of the information and knowledge age can be found simply in our daily routines, at work, at home, or even at play. Our daily routine of scouring through and reviewing our e-mail also tells us that e-mail as a critical communications medium is under assault. My e-mail box and those of my constituents are filled unwanted e-mail, most peddling some good or service ranging from the real to the absurd. I do not have a problem with marketing per se, after all our consumer based economy is highly dependent on marketing to differentiate the fantastic array of goods and services available to us as consumers. Rather, the problem is two fold, in my view. First, as the marginal cost of sending that additional e-mail is just about zero, senders of commercial e-mail have no incentive to target their marketing. Thus, the networks and systems that support e-mail are inundated with such e-mail. Recent estimates suggest that as much as half of all e-mail is composed of such commercial solicitations. Someone bears the cost of those voluminous unwanted solicitations. That someone, ultimately, is the e-mail user or consumer. We will pay, as the e-mail service providers will pass on the cost to us. We also pay in lost time and productivity - the time we have to spend going through and deleting those e-mails. The second problem is that e-mail communications make accountability more difficult. Therefore, unscrupulous people use it to advance fraudulent and deceptive acts and even good commercial actors are tempted to take advantage of this lack of accountability. I think targeted legislation can help bring about a greater level of accountability to e-mail communications. As the original co-sponsor of HR 2214, I think that it lays out the right framework for federal legislation. It is also significant that HR 2214 enjoys the support of both Chairmen Tauzin and Sensenbrenner. This type of cross-committee cooperation is necessary in order to enact legislation on issues such as spam. I am also pleased that some of the leading voices for antispam legislation, indeed pioneers in that effort, are my colleagues on this committee. I very much look forward to working with them, Ms. Wilson and Messrs. Green and Boucher, in reporting a good and effective bi-partisan bill out of the committee. I believe that effective federal legislation should help bring about greater accountability to e-mail commercial solicitations. That greater accountability can be achieved by strengthening existing laws - making sure that fraud and deception is prosecuted and subjected to severe penalties. In addition, I think that legislation should encourage accountability through adoption of certain "best practices" by e-mail marketers. I know a number of witnesses today have their own thoughts on this issue. I have a proposal that I think would advance best practices in the market place and in turn inject greater accountability. I hope to discuss my proposal with my colleagues as we move forward in this process. I do want to conclude however, with an observation that I believe most of our witnesses today agree: legislation is only part of the solution, and in my view a smaller part. Rather, technology, consumer education, and industry cooperation, in my view, are the key tools in combating spam and injecting real and effective accountability. Finally, we must also consider the trans-national dimensions of spam. It is an international problem that would require increased international cooperation to combat. I hope to introduce bi-partisan legislation before August recess that would strengthen the Federal Trade Commission's ability to address the growing problem of cross-border fraud, including spam that is not home grown. Thank you and look forward to the testimony.
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