Editorial: Here’s hoping that spam is now cooked

Monday, Dec. 22, 2003 | 9:24 a.m.

It may now be possible to envision a world without spam. Last week, President Bush signed an anti-spam law that could land offenders in jail or saddle them with heavy fines. Spam will not disappear overnight, but the new federal law gives the estimated 117 million Americans who use e-mail hope for eventual relief.

Spam is the generic name for the thousands of unsolicited and usually fraudulent commercial messages that show up in a computer user's e-mail. Deleting the spam, and retrieving legitimate e-mails from among it, costs businesses and individuals valuable time. The new law is aimed at the deceptive practices of "spammers," which includes masking their identities.

We supported the federal "Do Not Call" registry that has so far achieved the desired result of vastly reducing unwanted telemarketing calls. We also support this new anti-spam law and hope it becomes just as effective.

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