Sick of all those email messages advertising cheap pharmaceuticals, or the phony messages from “Citibank” asking you to “confirm” your personal information? These emails would be illegal under legislation now being considered by the D.C. Council.

D.C. Councilmember David Catania (I-At-Large) has introduced a bill, the “District of Columbia Spam Deterrence Act of 2005”, which would ban the sending of deceptive unsolicited commercial email messages or commercial spam without an unsubscribe feature in the District of Columbia. We were tipped off about the bill from a short blurb in SC magazine.

Among other things the law bans spoofing return email addresses, putting false information in a subject line, sending unsolicited messages without an unsubscribe feature, and email designed to solicit personal information through deception. As it is written, the law applies to people who send commercial electronic mail messages “(1) From a computer located in the District of Columbia; or (2) To an electronic mail address that the sender knows, or has reason to know, is held by a resident of the District of Columbia; or (3) To an interactive computer service with equipment or its principal place of business in the District of Columbia; or (4) To a domain name registered to a resident of the District of Columbia.”

We were happy to see that law is clear to state internet service providers are innocent as long as they are simply the conduit and not the senders of unsolicited email. You can view the text of the law (short PDF) or see the law’s current status before the Council. We’re not certain how enforceable the law would be or how it would jive with other legislation (or the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution), but we’re glad to see Catania trying to address this problem.