SPY Acts vs. CAN-SPAM: No difference

Yesterday I wrote about cyber crime -- particularly as promulgated through email messages. This morning I read House Approves Second Anti-Spyware Bill. The bill is officially called H.R. 1525: Internet Spyware  Prevention Act of 2007 and commonly known as the I-SPY Act. It follows H.R. 29 [109th]: Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act, commonly known as the SPY Act. Both bills have been passed multiple times by the U.S. House of Representatives. Each bill takes a different approach at curbing spyware. The lobbyists and House sponsors of each will be happy to tell you why their bill should be passed into law. However, neither have yet to be passed by the Senate.

Let's fast forward and say that one or both bills become law. The likelihood is that they will be as effective at curbing spyware as has been the CAN-SPAM legislation in curbing spam. Highly publicized, one-off convictions of spam cyber crooks is not a benchmark by which to judge the overall success of a piece of legislation.  As pointed out in CAN-SPAM Act: The 2005 "Report Card":

Anti-spam legislation is ineffectual unless it is universally agreed upon and equally enforced across global country boundaries – an unrealistic expectation over the next ten years.

To the naive, legislating spam and spyware as illegal is a good thing. For the winning lobbyists and politicians, it is a good thing. 

President Bush Signs Anti-Spam Law

Cyber criminals are not law-abiding Internet citizens, and the SPY Acts, like CAN-SPAM, will have little impact. 

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June 13, 2007 Update:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit advocate for public interest "freedoms of the networked world." The EFF has requested consumers to write to their Congressional representatives to Stop the Spyware Act.

[The Act] leaves enforcement exclusively in the hands of federal bureaucrats, specifically barring private citizens and organizations like EFF working on their behalf from using the new law to fight back in the courts.

Influential blog, BoingBoing, has declared support of the EFF's actions: 

The SPY Act, a new anti-spyware law, makes it impossible for consumer rights groups to sue DRM companies for putting spyware in their DRM (like Sony did last year, with its rootkit DRM). The irony is that spyware is already illegal, so all that this act does is immunize big media companies that sneak spyware onto your computer.

As I mentioned in my original post, the SPY Acts are politically motivated and will do little to protect the consumer.