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Washington Spam Law Upheld
An anonymous submitter sent in news that the Washington state Supreme Court upheld Washington's anti-spam law today. The law requires truthful information on all commercial emails sent from Washington state or to a Washington resident - commercial emailers may not disguise the origin of their messages (but aren't prohibited from sending UCE if they don't try to disguise themselves). It is a civil law, not a criminal one. Since this affects residents of other states who email into Washington, a spammer sued under the law by the state of Washington claimed that this was interfering with interstate commerce - regulating interstate commerce is a power reserved to the Federal government, not states. The trial court agreed. Washington appealed. The Washington Supreme Court held that requiring accurate identification information actually facilitates interstate commerce rather than burdening it. The decision is interesting, because several state internet censorship laws have been struck down due to their effects on residents of other states - it's worth reading for anyone interested in internet legal issues.
From one of my messages in my spam folder:
This message is sent in compliance of the proposed bill
SECTION 301. per Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S.
1618. This message is not intended for residents in the
State of Washington, screening of addresses has been done to
the best of our technical ability.
See...not only does it follow a proposed (and struck down if I recall) house bill, but gosh darnit - they've done the best they can to make sure they know who they are spamming.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to reply to this guy because I am interest in making easy $$$ at home that involves increasing my penis size with the help of hot willing 18 year old girls.
Of course the other spam I got, I will simply reply and I'll never need to worry about getting spam from them again.
See, spammers are nice friendly people.
This ruling does no such thing.
Quoth the court:
If the headers weren't forged (i.e., if the spammer had sent them through yahoo.com, even if he used a pseudonymous account at Yahoo), recipients could reply to him and effectively opt-out. (Not that this would be a smart thing to do, but I digress.)
This is a precedent against forgery with intent to deceive, not anonymity.
If I mail you through an anonymous remailer, the headers are stripped and re-inserted to facilitate anonymity, not to deceive you about my identity. Indeed, I'm quite capable of sending a PGP block through an anon-remailer that proves to you who I am, while making it impossible for any other reader of the message to know who I am or read its contents.
The talk about the "Pike balancing test" is important here:
WA spam law:
Your supposed "you must always use your real identity when mailing anyone, anonymous remailers will be illegal" law:
The balance here could go either way, depending on the judge. But it's a much closer call to make. The cost-shifting imposed by spam is well-established, and has no public benefit; prohibiting it is (by definition) a Good Thing. Pseudonymous (and anonymous) speech, while they can be abused (the Government will trot out the usual Three Horsemen: terrorists, druggies, and pedophiles), also has a rich history in our country - and protecting pseudonymous and anonymous speech has a public benefit. It's far from clear that a law prohibiting all anon/pseudon speech has sufficient public benefit to justify any impact on commerce whatsoever.
Basically, it's even farther from clear that the Pike test would apply to your proposed law, because the First Amendment issues might trump Commerce Clause issues altogether.
(And to the obligatory spammer who says "but my spam is frea speach", I point out that non-commercial speech has consistenly been afforded greater First Amendment protection than commercial speech. Deal.)
If you sue a Make Money Fast spammer, and win a big award, then the spam wasn't false in the first place.
Russell, meet Whitehead. Whitehead, Russell.
The spammers can still email people; they just can't forge their headers. The spammers can also advertise via other mediums as well.
By passing a law that prevents the sending of some kinds of email, the government is limiting the free speech of both individuals and companies. Whether you agree with SPAM or not, it's a constitutionally protected right of the sender, just like gun ownership.
the Supreme Cout has found that companies don't have the same free speach rights as people. While you are right in the fact that people have the right to bear arms; they do not have the right to randomly fire those guns into people's homes. The same is with spammers; they can send out adverts, but not to people who do not want them.
The only thing that will truely solve the SPAM problem are market forces. When people decide that having to relay spam is costing them more money than it would to fight said abuse of their systems, we will see unsolicted commercial email disappear pretty darn quick. In the meantime, the government just gets in the way and trys to speed a process that really can't be controlled by any one entity.
Due to the spammers low start up costs, market forces are not going to do much to them. Spammers do what they do cause it is cheap and after a few sales, you have covered your costs. If there is a couple of $500 fines levied against you every spam run, you are not going to spam people for very long. That is the only thing that will stop a spammer (outside of death or prison) is when it costs more to spam that what they make of the spamming.
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But you have the situation wrong. The law does not ban spam; the right of people to send spam is preserved. It makes it illegal to send spam if you:
IOW, it makes it illegal to send fraudulent spam. There is no constitutionally protected right to engage in fraud, so this is not an attack on free speech.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I wonder when someone will get a ruling against that.
Having seen some late night infomercials, I suspect that an awful lot of the money made in spam is made by the people who promote systems to advertise using spam, and that most small time operators do not get much out of it anyhow.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Or is sending it an exercise of a First Amendment right? That's debatable...unless you view it as humor, the typical "Make $$$ fast while growing your dick six inches and seeing Britney Spears naked, and also lose fifty pounds in a week" email isn't an act of profound creative expression...and while you have a right to say what you like, do you have a right to force me to listen to it? Do I get a choice as to whether my server accepts the message and shows it to me? In most situations I don't - I'm even paying to have your "speech" inflicted on myself. Does your (and note here I'm using "you" as a generic pronoun, not referring to you the author of the above post personally) right to free speech include forcing your email on me, if only for the time it takes the server to apply my filters and send it to my Trash folder? Or is SPAM really just commercial junk, and thus subject to regulation like any other sort of commercial junk?
That said, you raise an interesting point about it being censorship (though I'm not sure I buy it), one not often considered, and I hope you get modded up for it...this needs to generate some discussion.