ISU students are no strangers to the annoyance of commercial e-mails, known as “spam.” However, recently introduced legislation may put new regulations on the unwanted messages.

Sonia Raichura, an exchange student from England in business, said she gets about 10 pornographic spam e-mails sent to her Hotmail account every day.

“It bothers me, because my mother and 17-year-old sister use Hotmail as well,” she said.

Raichura, who has four e-mail accounts, said she gets spam on most of them, including her ISU address. Of all the types of spam she gets, it’s the pornographic messages that bother her the most.

“It’s embarrassing,” she said.

The U.S. Senate passed legislation Wednesday that would put new regulations on spam.

The bill, which passed with a 97-0 vote, would act as a deterrent to advertisers of pornography, cheap loans, herbal remedies and prescription drugs.

Sponsored by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the “Can Spam” bill strips away many of the tools used by mass e-mailers, making it illegal to copy addresses from Web sites or disguise the intent of mails by using false return addresses or misleading subject lines.

The bill will also establish a “do-not-spam” list similar to the do-not-call list approved earlier this year for protection against telemarketers. Violations of the new bill will be punished by fines and up to three years in prison.

However, experts said the bill’s future is clouded and argue such a regulation may be no more than wishful thinking.

“My immediate reaction when I read about it was that the bill was coming at the heels of the telemarketing law,” said Yong Lee, professor of political science.

“I think the Senate probably found it easy to pass this without discussing it much.”

Like the telemarketing bill, Lee expects the future of the Can Spam legislation to receive challenges under the First Amendment.

“The freedom of speech covers not only giving but receiving speech,” he said. “There might be some useful information coming from these advertisements and people might be angry at not being able to get at it.”

For example, it has become common on the Internet to send advertisements for foreign drugs, which are usually cheaper and easier to get than domestic pharmaceuticals, Lee said.

Lee said the legislation is clearly the result of junk e-mails overflowing inboxes, but he doubts the current bill will be enough to stop them. “We don’t have the technology to enforce something like this,” he said.

The bill will probably not be enough to effectively hinder senders of spam, Lee said.

Marie Mayer, communications specialist for AIT, expressed similar sentiments about the new bill.

“I am anxious to hear how they plan to implement this,” she said. “Spam is a very frustrating problem, but making a law doesn’t necessarily stop a behavior.”

AIT has tried to deal with spam before. In September 2002, a system was introduced to the ISU WebMail system designed to filter out mass e-mails.

Student reaction was overwhelmingly negative and there were problems with legitimate messages being labeled as spam and misplaced, Mayer said. Eventually, the office downgraded the filter system to an optional setting.

Even if the law is passed, Iowa State will still continue using its system to filter e-mail for students and faculty who ask for it, Mayer said.

“We have staffers who get thousands of e-mails a day,” she said. “Even if this is passed, spam’s not going to go away.”

— The Associated Press

contributed to this article.