Federal Trade Commission press release: FTC supports legislation to limit junk e-mail (also see Spam Laws)

The FTC's position may sound reasonable, but in fact the Commission favors a horrid out-out bill, S. 630. The FTC praises that bill in its testimony, saying that it "could make the use of commercial email a more effective marketing tool, because consumers likely would be more willing to trust the contents of a piece of UCE if they know the source of the email."

The FTC has been studying the spam issue for several years; you'd think that by now they would have figured out that the problem doesn't have anything to do with the content of communications. An effective spam law could help solve the spam problem, but legislating an opt-out rule would only make it much, much worse than it already is.