The latest legal action in the spam wars resulted from subscriber complaints – a staggering eight million of them, using a "Report Spam" feature in AOL's e-mail service. America's largest ISP, a division of AOL Time Warner, is seeking a total of $10 million and a court order to stop future spam attacks, according to a report by the Washington Post.
AOL also praised US Senators who are fighting spam. On Thursday, a new version of the 2001 Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (the CAN-SPAM Act) was introduced. The new law would give consumers a right to be removed from e-mail lists, creates an offence of using a false address when sending spam and gives new powers to the Federal Trade Commission to impose fines.
In a statement, AOL said:
"We will continue to work together with other ISPs and policymakers to ensure that spam legislation has 'real teeth', and provides the weapons needed to enable and empower AOL and other ISPs to pursue the most egregious and offensive spam violators - those who continue their daily spam attacks using the most fraudulent and evasive methods.
"As we move forward in a collaborative manner on the legislative front - at both the Federal and state levels - AOL will continue to focus on the approach that works best on spam fighting: a positive mix of legislation and litigation, filtering technology and member tools and education in order to get the job done to 'can the spam'."