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The "Colorado Junk Email Law"
toodrunk2f_ck writes: "News has been slow to trickle out about the new "Colorado Junk Email Law" (HB00-1309). Signed by Gov. Owen on June 6, the law is about to become active. CNET has this article on it and the legislative synopsis is here. Basically, the law allows receivers of unmarked "junk email" to sue senders for a $10 civil penalty per piece plus court costs. It seems unclear, though, how enforcement will work and what effects it may have. Imagine the workload on the courts if every person receiving spam were to sue over it. It will be interesting to see whether Colorado sets a precedent for other states to follow with this law." Hemos posted an article about the law before it was signed; that article is unfortunately no longer available, but the comments are.
...must provide the originating e-mail address of the spam
...can't forge third party domain names in the spam unless permission is granted
...can't forge header information
...must use "ADV" in the subject line of the spam (for easy filtering)
...must provide an opt-out mechanism
...can't spam people who've requested to be removed
What makes this bill work is that spammers can't forge header information, which would work right in with forging domain names in the spam. A lot of sites out there (nowhere.com, localhost.com, etc.) have fallen victim to spammers forging their domain names, so this will hopefully save the hapless sysadmins from a lot of headaches. Also, it does say that spammers must honor remove requests. But think about how many spammers there are out there. It's almost like the dilemna of getting off a telemarketer's list. You may have gotten off Company A's list, but Company A may have sold your number to Company B, and you're back to square one. Besides, it's been proven in the past that spammers use their remove lists for spam runs, since the addresses are obviously valid. The requiring of "ADV" in the subject line of the spam works, to a degree. While you can filter out the spam based on that information on the user or system level, it doesn't stop the spam.
And there's a lot that doesn't make this bill worth a lot. For one, requiring that the spam provide a valid From: address is just wasting space on the paper the bill is printed on. The spammer could use a Hotmail throwaway and get away with it, since they could argue that it's a valid address. The opt-out mechanism doesn't work either. It's been a fact that a lot of spammers out there use remove lists for spamming. And while the spammers must obey your request, it falls into the telemarketing scenario above. This bill also doesn't prohibit using an open server as a third party relay (AKA relay rape), which is a big problem, since some servers have crashed due to the load of spam being sent through it.
Basically, as long as your spam has a valid From: address, "ADV" in the subject line, an opt-out mechanism, and doesn't forge header information or domain names, you can spam all you want. And that really doesn't do a whole hell of a lot of good IMHO.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
However, lawyers will be on this like flies on honey. The best profit margin that a lawyer can have is on a class action suit, and this has to be one of the easiest ones for them to find claimants. Lawyers will make a bit of money, and if we're really lucky they'll litigate the spammers into non-existence.
It may well be that only federal legislation can resolve this problem. Washington State's anti-spam legislation was recently held unconstitutional on the ground that states may not regulate the flow of spam, in that doing so is unduly restrictive of interstate commerce in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
While another court may have a different view, there is precedent that seems indistinguishable in the present case.
And even if federal legislation is passed, there remains the outstanding First Amendment questions. Soon to be seen at an appellate court near you . . .