U.S. regulators said on Thursday they would seek to prevent "spam" messages from reaching mobile phones and consider setting up a registry of e-mail users who don't want to receive junk messages.
The Federal Communications Commission said it would look into ways to keep cell phones free of the unwanted messages that plague computer networks, while the Federal Trade Commission said it would explore whether it could duplicate its "Do Not Call" anti-telemarketing registry for e-mail users.
At separate events, the heads of both agencies displayed starkly contrasting levels of enthusiasm for their tasks.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell likened spam messages to "cockroaches" and said he hoped government and private-sector efforts could "exterminate them from your electronic living room" at an agency meeting.
FTC Chairman Timothy Muris, meanwhile, repeated his doubts that a do-not-spam list could work against rogue marketers who already flout the law.
"I've seen nothing to change my mind, but we are doing an in-depth study, and perhaps there will be some new evidence that comes out of that study," Muris told a conference of consumer advocates.
Get-rich-quick schemes, pornography and other unsolicited bulk messages account for 62 percent of all e-mail traffic, according to filtering firm Brightmail Inc.
Consumer outrage
Consumer outrage spurred Congress to outlaw many of the worst forms of spam last year. The law has already been invoked by four large Internet providers in suits against online marketers, and FTC investigators say they are preparing several cases as well.
But other aspects of the law, such as how to label pornographic messages, need to be fleshed out by regulators before they can take effect.
Cell-phone spam has emerged as a major problem in countries like Japan, where "text messaging" is popular.
U.S. carriers say they have largely controlled the problem so far as they have much greater control over their networks than do Internet providers.
FCC regulators will ask for public comments as they try to figure out how to distinguish unwanted spam from legitimate messages, how to allow mobile-phone users to block unsolicited messages or tell marketers to leave them alone.
The agency will also consider whether to set up a "do-not-spam" list of text-message addresses. A report is due in late September.
The FTC will tell Congress by June 16 whether a no-spam list could help regular e-mail users receive less spam.
The agency's Do Not Call registry for those who do not want to receive telemarketing calls has been widely hailed as a success, attracting some 58 million phone numbers since it was rolled out last July.
But unlike telemarketers, who respected the list even as they challenged it in court, spammers are likely to simply ignore a do-not-spam list, Muris said.
"I said last summer I would advise you not to waste your time to sign up if there was such a registry, because again we're dealing with people who are already violating a lot of laws," he said.