New York ? The European Union has a law banning unsolicited junk e-mail. Japan has one prohibiting spam to random addresses.

And the United States?

Several bills are pending in Congress, but the legislation with the best chances for passage has been so watered down that leading anti-spammers no longer support it.

Some states have their own spam laws, but prosecutions and civil lawsuits are few.

The Direct Marketing Assn., an industry group based in New York, prefers self-regulation. Marketers worry that laws could harm their ability to send what they consider legitimate advertising.

Jim Conway, the trade group’s vice president for government relations, said the trick is to find an approach to curtail porn, fraud and other “tawdry solicitations” without blocking banks from pitching mortgage rates.

Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle cautions that new laws could increase costs for well-behaved companies without tackling bad practices.

The Federal Trade Commission has brought more than 30 spam-related cases using existing fraud and deception laws meager for an agency that gets 45,000 spam messages forwarded by the public each day.

The agency is stepping up its investigations, but fighting spammers is tough, said FTC staff attorney Brian Huseman.

“Spam cases are resource-intensive,” he said. “It’s hard to track down spammers. It’s easy to hide your identity.”

Even if the United States had strong federal spam laws, it’s unclear how effective they might be. Delaware’s is one of the strongest, but it has yet to result in a prosecution.

“It’s relatively easy to identify the Internet account from which spam originates,” said Steven Wood, Delaware’s chief criminal prosecutor. “It’s proven to be extremely difficult to identify the actual person, corporation or entity which owns the spam account.”

Wood said jurisdiction isn’t a problem when tracking companies and networks in other states. But he said many spammers are located abroad beyond the reach of even a federal spam law.

The European Parliament passed a law earlier this year requiring marketers to seek permission before sending marketing messages. Seven EU countries have already adopted the ban. Even so, spam has not stopped.

Japan’s law, meanwhile, requires e-mail senders to clearly label messages that are unsolicited advertisements. The law, which took effect July 1, also lets recipients decline future mailings from a marketer and prohibits bulk advertising to randomly chosen addresses.

A U.S. Senate committee in May approved legislation that would require e-mail marketers to let recipients decline, or “opt out” of, future pitches. But the bill would not ban the first unsolicited message.

Anti-spam advocates consider the measure weak, complaining that it would only allow government officials and Internet service providers not individuals to go after spammers.