§7703 — Title 15 Commerce and Trade | U.S. Code

Summary

The United States Sentencing Commission must review and update sentencing rules to add proper penalties for people who break the new anti-spam law and for crimes helped by sending lots of unwanted commercial email. The Commission should consider tougher punishments for people who got email addresses by improper means (like harvesting addresses from someone else’s website or randomly generating them), who used false domain registration info, or who used mass email to commit other crimes such as fraud, identity theft, obscenity, child pornography, or sexual exploitation of children. Congress says spam is often used to spread pornography, scams, and computer viruses. The Department of Justice should use all available law-enforcement tools to investigate and prosecute those who send bulk commercial email to help commit federal crimes, including laws about fraud, false statements, obscenity, child sexual exploitation, and racketeering.

Title 15, §7703

Commerce and Trade — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)

(b)(1)Pursuant to its authority under section 994(p) of title 28 and in accordance with this section, the United States Sentencing Commission shall review and, as appropriate, amend the sentencing guidelines and policy statements to provide appropriate penalties for violations of section 1037 of title 18, as added by this section, and other offenses that may be facilitated by the sending of large quantities of unsolicited electronic mail.

(2)In carrying out this subsection, the Sentencing Commission shall consider providing sentencing enhancements for—

(A)those convicted under section 1037 of title 18 who—

(i)obtained electronic mail addresses through improper means, including—

(I)harvesting electronic mail addresses of the users of a website, proprietary service, or other online public forum operated by another person, without the authorization of such person; and

(II)randomly generating electronic mail addresses by computer; or

(ii)knew that the commercial electronic mail messages involved in the offense contained or advertised an Internet domain for which the registrant of the domain had provided false registration information; and

(B)those convicted of other offenses, including offenses involving fraud, identity theft, obscenity, child pornography, and the sexual exploitation of children, if such offenses involved the sending of large quantities of electronic mail.

(c)It is the sense of Congress that—

(1)Spam has become the method of choice for those who distribute pornography, perpetrate fraudulent schemes, and introduce viruses, worms, and Trojan horses into personal and business computer systems; and

(2)the Department of Justice should use all existing law enforcement tools to investigate and prosecute those who send bulk commercial e-mail to facilitate the commission of Federal crimes, including the tools contained in chapters 47 and 63 of title 18 (relating to fraud and false statements); chapter 71 of title 18 (relating to obscenity); chapter 110 of title 18 (relating to the sexual exploitation of children); and chapter 95 of title 18 (relating to racketeering), as appropriate.

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Codification Section is comprised of section 4 of Pub. L. 108–187. Subsec. (a) of section 4 of Pub. L. 108–187 enacted section 1037 of Title 18, Crimes and Criminal Procedure, and amended analysis for chapter 47 of Title 18. The provisions of subsec. (b) of section 4 of Pub. L. 108–187 are also listed in a table relating to sentencing guidelines set out as a note under section 994 of Title 28, Judiciary and Judicial Procedure.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Effective Date

Section effective Jan. 1, 2004, see section 16 of Pub. L. 108–187, set out as a note under section 7701 of this title.

§7703 Prohibition Against Predatory and Abusive Commercial E-mail