§7703 Prohibition Against Predatory and Abusive Commercial E-mail

Summary

Under its authority in section 994(p) of title 28, the United States Sentencing Commission must review and, if needed, change sentencing rules to set appropriate penalties for violations of section 1037 of title 18 and for other crimes helped by sending large amounts of unsolicited email. The Commission must consider tougher sentences for people convicted under section 1037 who got email addresses by improper means (for example, harvesting addresses from someone else’s website without permission or randomly generating addresses by computer) or who knew the messages used an Internet domain with false registration information. It must also consider enhancements for other crimes—such as fraud, identity theft, obscenity, child pornography, and sexual exploitation of children—when those crimes involved large volumes of email. Congress states that spam is commonly used to spread pornography, scams, and malware, and that 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 tools in chapters 47 and 63, chapter 71, chapter 110, and chapter 95 of title 18.