To all:- The following may be lengthy -- copy or print and save. To date, there is no number to the Private Members Bill, but I wish Senator Donald Oliver a great deal of success! Many thanks to MY hometown and first newspaper for printing the Letter to the Editor. Muriel M. Davidson muriel_davidson@sympatico.ca Brampton, ON --- formerly Queens County, NS ================= Letter to the Editor, The Liverpool Advance, Liverpool, NS --- August 20, 2003 ============== Dear Editor:- In recent years, the phenomenon of "spam", or unsolicited commercial email, has ballooned to a problem costing Canadian businesses almost one billion dollars a year. In 2002, 7.3 billion emails were sent out over the Internet - of these, almost 32% were spam. In my view, this is an unacceptable invasion of privacy, far worse than those dinnertime telemarketing calls. Not only is spam annoying, it is often blatantly vulgar, fraudulent or sexually explicit. Spammers do not differentiate between a child's email address and that of an adult; as a result, young people are often forced to view pornographic material sent directly to their personal inbox. Again, in my view this is unacceptable. Canadians would not tolerate pornographic magazine subscriptions or free edible underwear samples turning up in their traditional post each morning. Indeed, it is against the law. They would not tolerate their pre-teen daughters' name appearing in the address box of a coupon book for diet pills and breast enhancements. So why would Canadians allow such damaging messages to enter their homes through a computer? Perhaps it is because the fluid and borderless nature of the Internet that governments and regulatory institutions have been slow to enter and control this newest technological frontier. Even though there are laws in place designed to prevent fraudulent solicitations, harrassing telephone calls and other equally unlawful activity, the problem of spam has not been resolved. Obviously, the current legislation does not have "teeth" enough to do the job. Therefore, it is time for the Government of Canada to step-up and introduce tougher legislation designed specifically to protect her citizens from abusive spammers and return to them the privacy and control over which messages they receive through their email. This is why I am proposing to introduce a Private Members Bill into the Senate this September. It will be designed to protect Internet Service Providers from shouldering the blame for spam reaching their customers' inboxes, while giving the clear message to spammers that their harmful, annoying solicitations are not welcome within our borders. It will also give individual citizens the power to be compensated for the damages theu suffer at the hands of spammers. With the support of the public, the problem of spam will soon be a thing of the past. Senator Donald H. Oliver, QC Progressive Conservative, NS