FTC sort of says that CAN SPAM sort of works

The CAN SPAM act required that the Federal Trade Commission report back after a year, which they did, releasing the report almost as an afterthought with a press release about some international anti-spam enforcement at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/12/buttonpushers.htm.

The goals of the CAN SPAM act were to make life better for large bulk mailers, and to make it somewhat easier to go after the crooks. (Note that stopping UBE or UCE isn't in that list.) It did both of those reasonably well, as the FTC documents. They then go on to say that one thing it didn't do was to give them the authority to work closely with other governments to deal with spammers active in multiple countries, and they suggest some legislation to do so.

We think it's fine to give the FTC better international enforcement powers, but it's no substitute for an actual anti-spam law.
One of the CAUCE board members has further thoughts in his blog at http://weblog.johnlevine.com/Email/ftcreport.html.