When the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced a $2.9 million settlement
with online marketing firm ValueClick this month, it was a record monetary settlement
under the 4-year-old CAN-SPAM Act.

That announcement came just days after so-called spam king Robert Soloway pleaded
guilty in Seattle to a number of criminal charges. Soloway, who faced one count
related to CAN-SPAM in addition to mail fraud, wire fraud and other charges,
faces up to 26 years in prison.

But despite these recent court cases, some critics don't see a lot of value
in CAN-SPAM, short for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography
and Marketing.

"CAN-SPAM has had virtually no impact on the spam problem at large,"
said Ray Everett-Church, a longtime spam fighter and director of policy and
professional services at Habeas, a company that provides e-mail authentication
services. "It has enabled the FTC to take action against a few bad actors,
and that has worked to deter some otherwise legitimate companies from playing
fast and loose with the rules."

But spam is as big of a problem as ever, and the worst spammers "remain
unfazed and undeterred" by CAN-SPAM, Everett-Church said. Everett-Church
and other antispam activists criticize CAN-SPAM for allowing marketers to send
unsolicited commercial e-mail until people opt out.

Harvard University technology security officer Scott Bradner called spam prosecutions
and settlements "all too rare" in
a recent column at Network World. "To say that the FTC has been careful
in its approach to enforcing this act would be misleading -- a better word would
be 'lethargic' or maybe 'comatose,'" he wrote.

Officials with the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice say criminal spam
cases can be difficult to investigate because spammers often hide their identities
through falsified e-mail headers, offshore servers, and affiliate senders and
payment processors. Still, the DOJ has prosecuted about a dozen criminal spam
cases in the past four years, and the FTC has taken civil action in 31 CAN-SPAM
cases, according to officials at both agencies.

Including cases before CAN-SPAM passed, the FTC has taken action in more than
90 spam cases, involving more than 250 defendants. In addition, CAN-SPAM allows
state attorneys general to file lawsuits against spammers, and several have
done so.

At the DOJ, CAN-SPAM has helped prosecutors build cases against spammers, and
in some cases, the spam charges have led to other charges, DOJ officials said.

Among the cases: The DOJ in January indicted 11 people, including alleged master
spammer Alan Ralsky, accusing them of using a sophisticated and extensive spamming
operation that fueled a stock pump-and-dump scheme. The defendants allegedly
used spam to tout Chinese penny stocks, driving up the price of the stock and

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