Comments:

The do not email registry is a good idea. Spam was born naturally out of the growth of the Internet. Charging someone with a violation for sending an email will benefit some people, but hinder others. Does that mean I report my mom who sends me dumb jokes, too? That's stuff I don't want, but I would never "turn her in" for it. Opt out lists are the way to go, just like the do not call lists. I know of some people that are too lazy to put themselves on that list, but they're also the kind of people who would try to sue to get money out of it. Make people responsible for putting in effort to reduce unwanted spam, but don't hinder business and personal relationship development by making people feel they can't send emails. The larger issue for me is pop-ups. By far, that should be an issue tackled at this point in time. That freezes up your computer and hinders the ability to go about your business in a lot of ways. In regards to rewarding those who supply info about violators, that's a good idea when people have put themselves on an opt-out list and are still receiving emails from the senders who were asked to stop sending them. The sender should also be responsible for receiving it, and not be able to say "I didn't receive it." I've seen where the pages don't load or the page no longer exists under the link "unsubscribe" or it's equivalent. The effectiveness and enforcement of the CAN SPAM Act should rest on opt-out lists. If we are to limit emails, we have to get rid of pop-ups, telephone calls, and direct mail. SPAM is something we'll never get rid of, there will always be people that say it's not SPAM (my mother), and someone else will say it is. Businesses and individuals alike both receive and send emails that people don't want, and a law will likely only punish businesses. This is America, capitalism. Making people fearful of sending a friendly message is absolutely wrong. People should be able to put whatever they want in the subject line. We already have controls in place (AOL, for example) that allow people to screen who they want to receive emails from and who they don't. Let's let the market take over for a while, we're truly still in infancy in terms of Internet. Only 25% at most have broadband access at this point.