Industry committee  I'll be quite honest. It's very difficult to draw the line between legitimate businesses and illegitimate businesses, and it's very difficult to craft legislation that deals with that. Now, having said that, I think the provisions that allow people to send electronic messages if

Industry committee  Let me address the first part of the question about whether this hinders the ability of businesses to engage in legitimate marketing. In some ways, I think using electronic means of communication to do marketing is quite different from, say, direct mail. One obvious example is

Industry committee  A typical Internet service provider collects a great deal of information in the course of providing services. There's nothing in ECPA that prevents a telecommunications service provider or an ISP from disclosing that information that is already collected. What it does prohibit is

Industry committee  I'll add just a couple of very quick points just to reiterate that since the act applies only to commercial activities, law enforcement agencies aren't engaged in commercial activity, and therefore it doesn't affect the ability of law enforcement agencies to collect this informat