Late in 2003, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-187). CAN-SPAM is short for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003."

The Act imposes new regulations on the way spammers operate, including requirements intended to make it easy for people to opt out of further commercial e-mail from the same source, easy to avoid opening unwanted junk e-mail, and easy for anyone, including law enforcement agencies, to trace the source of illegal spam back to an Internet address and even to a postal address.

CAN-SPAM also calls for enforcement by the Justice Department of certain laws relevant to e-mail abuses, including the laws against obscenity and the sexual exploitation of children. And it calls for enforcement on the Internet of other consumer and investor protection laws by the agencies with enforcement authority, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration.

So far, so good.

But then the Act provides that spammers may send out "sexually oriented material" if they put a warning label on it.

The Federal Trade Commission has adopted this language for the label:

"SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-CONTENT:"

Here's a version, never considered by the FTC, that would have been closer to the full-disclosure mark:

WARNING. HERE COMES THE PORN.

Here's another:

THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS SEXUALLY ORIENTED MATERIAL AND MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL OBSCENITY OR CHILD EXPLOITATION LAWS.

Somehow slapping a label on porn and letting it go doesn't seem quite up to the law's grand title and purpose. But a ban on all porn spam isn't doable since pornography that isn't obscene or child pornography is legal for adults. Most porn spam, however, promotes commercial Web sites that traffic in hardcore pornography—which means that most porn spam should go away when the Justice Department begins to vigorously enforce the federal Internet obscenity laws.

The warning label is intended to protect the innocent from inadvertently opening e-mail containing offensive sexual material and to help filtering software programs eliminate the junk. Labels may also help flag porn spam for the Justice Department's attention.

Some porn purveyors may ignore the label requirement and others may flaunt it as a bogus sign of government approval to cover the transmission even of hardcore obscene material.

Count on this: Warning labels won't reduce the volume of porn spam. And this: Friends of porn will challenge the warning labels on First Amendment grounds.

A San Diego police officer, fired from his job in 2000 after he sold videos of himself masturbating, sued the city claiming his free speech rights had been violated by the firing. A divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided in late January that he could pursue the claim. Sharply dissenting, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote, "the majority's astonishing new rule disregards the content of public employee speech . . . . [T]he majority holds that the San Diego Police Department ("SDPD") is required to justify in federal court its decision to fire Roe for violating departmental regulations by offering for sale over the internet an SDPD uniform and offering and selling videotapes of himself stripping off a police uniform and masturbating. I simply cannot agree to a new rule of law that produces such an absurd result."

Since obscenity charges weren't brought, both the trial court and the appeals court treated the sexually explicit videotapes as non-obscene.

A federal grand jury in Charleston, West Virginia, returned an indictment March 10 against a West Virginia resident, charging him with two counts of interstate transportation of obscene material. The man was accused of using a common carrier to transport obscene digital video disks from West Virginia to Alabama in September and December of 2003. Each count carries the possibility of up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

U.S. Attorney Kasey Warner used the occasion to sound a warning:

"The U.S. Attorney General has stated '[t]he Department . . . . is unequivocally committed to the task of prosecuting obscenity.' We have answered his call . . . . Potential offenders should take heed: Our High Tech Investigative Unit (HTIU) is comprised of computer forensic specialists who focus on the online distribution of obscenity and child pornography. . . . Specialists are currently working very closely with this U.S. Attorney's office, the local FBI, and Postal Inspectors in a number of investigations, trials and appeals related to obscenity prosecutions. Extensive training of Federal prosecutors and investigators in obscenity-related subjects is ongoing. The Department of Justice is making full use of all obscenity fighting tools."

How bad is the pornification of American culture?

It's so bad that drivers are complaining about x-rated DVDs playing on screens in nearby cars, and at least one state legislature is considering a new law to deal with the situation. USA Today (March 28) cites the experience of a driver in Memphis and another in Schenectady, N.Y.

A woman in Los Angeles was attacked in her apartment by a man intent on carrying out a "rape fantasy" he had pre-arranged with a woman—a different woman—he had met on a "rape fantasy" Internet chat page. Reuters reported April 1 that the man broke into the wrong apartment and pleaded guilty to residential burglary with the expectation he will serve a year in prison.

For more on the broader issues involved in this story, see "The Link Between Pornography And Violent Sex Crimes," by Morality in Media President Robert Peters. It is posted on this Web site.

Commenting about the article, Mr. Peters said: "At a time when some commentators in the media are saying that pornography is widely accepted and harmless, we need to remind ourselves that common sense, anecdotal evidence and social science research all point in the opposite direction.

"While some in the mainstream press can't seem to say enough about the financial success of hard-core pornographers, the truly important news can be found in the very dark underside of pornography as documented by law enforcement personnel, domestic abuse and rape crisis counselors, psychologists, victims, and others. The article looks at pornography from this perspective and, we hope, will prove useful as a reference and a guide for the public and media."

In the article, Mr. Peters notes that pornography defenders claim pornography has "a cathartic effect on individuals who would otherwise commit sexual crimes." If that were so, he adds, "then the incidence of sexual abuse of children should be decreasing in proportion to the expansion of traffic in child pornography. . . . The incidence of violent sexual crimes committed by children should be decreasing, because never before has hardcore pornography been so readily available to children. . . . Women should feel safer than ever because never before in human history has so much hardcore pornography been so readily available to persons of all ages. . . . The incidence of violent sexual crimes in general should be rapidly decreasing, because there has been an explosion of web sites featuring bondage, domination, gangbangs, rape, rough sex, and torture." But in each of these cases, Mr. Peters points out, the situation is getting worse, not better.

In their fight to preserve audience share from cable TV—where the off-beat and off-color attract a great deal of attention—NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, UPN and The WB have often taken the low road instead of aiming for more quality programming. In doing so, they've run afoul of concerned citizens and the FCC without gaining on their cable competitors. Network people have to hope Congress or the FCC will do something to level the playing field. Subjecting cable to FCC enforcement of the indecency rules, which is not the case now, would help the networks because both broadcast and cable would have the incentives to take the high road. That, of course, would be good for concerned citizens. In the post-Super Bowl/Janet Jackson climate in Washington, it could happen.

The New York Times reported March 7 that House Republican leader Tom DeLay has warned cable operators they might be forced to offer channels "a la carte" rather than in pre-packaged bundles. That would enable subscribers to choose, and pay for, only the channels they want. That wouldn't directly clean up cable TV but it would mean more or less funding for individual channels depending on their popularity. If enough viewers were to opt for high quality decent programming a la carte pricing could have a salutary effect on cable. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain also has been urging cable companies to do this.

Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported February 16 that the Janet Jackson flap has "turned politicos trigger happy." Viacom President Mel Karmazin told a sometimes hostile Congressional committee that Janet Jackson's breast-baring stunt "was on for less than three-quarters of a second, a mere 18 frames." But, of course, Ms. Jackson's flash was offensive as well as brief, and it was not the whole show. The rest of it was outrageous. The entire writhing, sex-simulating mess of a halftime show offended millions and trashed broadcast decency standards.

If stiffer enforcement of broadcast decency standards comes out of all this, we will look back at the 2004 Super Bowl half time show gratefully. But if we don't get that result, the show will become a precedent for more of the same, and worse. Congress seems to understand this.