It's time to limit junk e-mail Commentary Brock Meeks       A group called the "Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail" is taking the situation by the horns.	Spam killers: fighting the good fight WASHINGTON - If there were ever a cause in which the participants were on the side of the angels, it is in the tireless effort to rid the Net of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), more commonly known as electronic junk mail or simply "spam." If you haven't had to endure the aggravation of UCE, you're either the luckiest soul trolling cyberspace or you have an abnormal aversion to using e-mail. It's safe to say that if you're regularly using e-mail, you've been targeted by some intrusive form of junk e-mail. UCE also is a "theft of service" problem. Spammers send out hundreds of thousands of e-mails at a single mouse click. Those messages eat up processing time through numerous Internet Service Providers and often bring down smaller systems and end up delaying or aborting legitimate mail altogether. Compounding the problem is the fact that most spammers forge their e-mail IDs, making it impossible for you to be taken off their lists. LIKE FAXES, LIKE SPAM There are no laws regulating UCE. There is a law on the books that bans so-called junk faxes and it has worked like a charm. In all but a few isolated instances here and there, junk faxes dried up faster than a waterhole in the Sudan after the bill was passed. The motivation for that bill came when Congressional fax machines started getting bombarded by junk faxes. That hit the Congressional trip hammer and the law flew through Congress. With more and more lawmakers jacked into cyberspace and using e-mail for correspondence, the plague of junk e-mail is hitting home just as junk faxes did. While Congress muddles about, looking for a solution, a group called the "Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail" (CAUCE) has formed and is taking the situation by the horns. This grassroots movement, which sprang up from an e-mail list dedicated to fighting spamming efforts through technology and cooperation, is completely ad hoc. There are no big-bucks political action committees behind the group, although it does have its own Washington lobbyist, Ray Everett-Church, who counts America Online among his clients, which he has helped successfully fend off junk e-mailers. CAUCE is calling for a legal ban on UCE and has gone so far as to draft an amendment to the existing junk fax bill that would include commercial junk e-mail. That's important because the ban wouldn't apply to charitable groups or those supporting a cause. Banning those types of bulk e-mail would slip into an area of First Amendment rights. INTERNET CAUCUS MAY WEIGH IN So what CAUCE has done, in essence, is do the legwork for Congress. All the bill needs is a sponsor and Leahy is a likely target. On the House side, the group intends to target Rep. Rick White, R-Wash. Both Leahy and White were instrumental in founding the Internet Caucus. And although the Caucus doesn't formally endorse legislation, its 80-plus members in both houses of Congress pack enough punch to line up behind such a bill and move it through the sausage-making legislative process we call "lawmaking" here in Washington. The proposed amendment "would give e-mail users control of the kinds of advertising they are willing to accept in their mailboxes, whether they prefer to shut it off completely, or ask for more," according to a CAUCE press release. The full amendment can be found at their Web site and it appears to be written intelligently and well thought out. I'm in league with all of you who chafe at any mention of governmental regulation when it comes to the Internet. Better that the government stay completely out of it. But that's not the case with this issue. First, the bill is narrowly drafted. It's also based on an underlying bill that is (1) successful and (2) has already passed a legal challenge, having been upheld in federal court. That addresses the main First Amendment argument, that such a bill would unfairly limit commercial speech. THE DELETE KEY IS NOT ENOUGH For those that argue that there are technological and even "no tech" solutions to e-mail, I beg to differ. Take the most common argument for dealing with junk e-mail: "Just hit the delete key." I mean, how much simpler could this be? A year ago, I would have echoed the same phrase. That was before I began getting several of these unsolicited pitches each day. Simply hitting the delete key, while an effective low-tech approach, does nothing to solve the problem. Instead, it's really an "enabling" action, not much different than the spouse of an alcoholic dumping the booze down the drain. It's an ineffective Band-Aid for dealing with the underlying problem. And don't hand me the argument that junk e-mailers would simply move off-shore. It won't happen. It hasn't happened with junk faxes and there's no reason to believe it would happen with UCE. The main reason is that overseas connections are more tenuous than those in the United States and I doubt any ISP overseas will want to deal with the headaches any more than ISPs in the states do. PROTECTING THE ISPs The issue of ISP liability is one sticky point here. It's tough to make an ISP responsible for what travels through its pipes. That leads to a Pandora's box of other problems that no one wants to see happen. ISPs should be treated as common carriers, like the telephone companies, which aren't held accountable because some criminals plan their deeds on the phone. Providing "good faith" provisions in the bill would be one solution. If the ISP takes steps to ensure that all accounts are verified and tied to a real address and credit card number, it would make the offenders easy to track down. Privacy advocates might have some problem with this, claiming it would wipe out anonymity on the Net. I don't believe this is a huge problem; people can still be anonymous on the Net even with a verified account; however, spammers will no longer be able to jump from ISP to ISP, keeping one step ahead of the law. Is the bill perfect? I doubt it. No bill is. But it is narrowly crafted and built on strong legal precedent. That's encouragement enough for me. The bottom line here is that we're well ahead of the curve, for once, when it comes to a possible regulation being grafted onto cyberspace. There's plenty of time for all to have reasoned and well-thought-out input on the process. And given the history of Congress and the Net, that is a luxury we should all be cheering. Meeks out ...