WASHINGTON -- A House committee scaled back legislation Thursday that aims to curb junk e-mail, cutting out provisions that would allow consumers to sue companies that ignored requests to be taken off their mailing lists.
The House Judiciary Committee also added a measure that would require pornographic messages to be labeled as such, allowing consumers to delete the messages without opening them if they so desired.
The bill, which passed on a voice vote after lengthy debate, bears more resemblance to another introduced by Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte than the version approved by the Energy and Commerce committee in March.
Goodlatte, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said he was pleased with how the bill turned out, while bill sponsor Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican, released a statement objecting to the changes.
The bill now moves to the Rules Committee, which will try to reconcile the two versions.
Judiciary Committee members said Wilson's bill would encourage frivolous lawsuits, give too much power to Internet providers and make it difficult for legitimate businesses to communicate with their customers.
"These provisions are disproportionate to the harm or damage caused by spam," said committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.
Sensenbrenner and other committee members said they would rather boost Internet access providers' ability to block spam than try to regulate online commerce.
As such, the bill they passed would require spammers to use legitimate return address so access providers could identify and block unwanted e-mail more readily. In addition, access providers would be allowed to sue spammers for up to $1 million plus attorneys' fees.
The committee also approved a measure requiring pornographic messages to be labeled despite concerns that it might run afoul of existing obscenity laws.
A similar amendment that sought to label all spam was voted down.
Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank said he thought the new bill did not go far enough to protect consumers, even if spam rarely amounted to little more than an annoyance.
"Excessive noise can be an annoyance. Second-hand smoke can be an annoyance," Frank told Reuters. "People think the Internet is the most delicate flower in the world, and it must be put under glass."
