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Michigan's Proposed Spam Law Called Toughest In U.S.
goats_in_boats writes "A new bill (PDF
or HTML)
was presented to the Governor
of Michigan that would require spam sent to residents of the State to be identified
as such. Highlights include the requirement that unsolicited email 'Include in
the e-mail subject line "ADV:" as the first 4 characters' and that 'a person who
violates this act is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not
more than 1 year or a fine of not more than $10,000.00, or both.' An article
in the Detroit Free Press calls the bill 'the most stringent anti-spam law in
the nation.'"
Now we just need a few more laws in different states, mandating a different set of initial 4 characters. SPM:, AVT:, etc... That would make it reasonably difficult to send nationwide SPAM with any guarantee of legality.
1. Enforcement: How will they actually prosecute (or even find) spammers that violate the law? I'd say there's a pretty good chance that there will be quite a few complaints. Assuming they're even able to backtrack and find the spammers who violate the law, a large number of violations could render this law unenforceable. It takes a good amount of time to review the violation, try to track down where the e-mail came from, etc. If they can't effectivly track down violators, the law won't do much.
2. Interstate/International commerce: While this should affect spammers in all states (as explained in another post), how will this hold up with international companies? Does this stop a company in the US from sending it's spam through a Canadian e-mail advertising agency? Does it apply to non-US companies at all? I'm far from a legal expert, so if you have any ideas please share them.
As much as I dislike spam I find it disconcerting that so much focus has been put on it by politicians. Our current government has major structural problems which have been getting little press as of late (such as the bush mandated discrimination against pro-homosexual bureaucratic policies). The fight against spam is trivial, yet has a powerful hold. I think its largely the result of common support from all consumers + it makes politicians look technologically adept and forward thinking. In short, it's low hanging fruit, an easy win. This question has been asked a million times, but, why can't we focus on what's really going on.
Photos.
(a) "Commercial e-mail" means an electronic message, file, data, or other information promoting the sale, lease, or exchange of goods, services, real property, or any other thing of value that is transmitted between 2 or more computers, computer networks, or electronic terminals or within a computer network.
I can't quite decide if this covers donations and political messages, the usual exemptions you see in these bills.
I'm guessing the word "commercial" was inserted in there to make the exemption implicit. A shame.
What if a Michigan citizen is checking his e-mail from a server in London, from a hotel room in Tokyo?
Michigan never enters the scope. Who and what has to be in Michigan for this to work?
No, if you wish to solicit by email, you have to put 'ADV:' at the begining of your mail. What's so hard about that?
Then you are in compliance, and you don't get fined, and people who don't like spam can filter you out.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
And how many lines of code would it take to block the whole message at the mail server? This could be an option the user could enable, and then the server itself only downloads the header before rejecting the message.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
One mother told me that when she found pornographic messages in the family's e-mail, she immediately suspected that the teenagers in her house had been up to no good. The broken trust took weeks to repair.
and that's the basic tone of the whole piece: spam is a trojan horse rolling sexual material into the living rooms of godfearing, wholesome americans.
of course, it's not worse than the detroit free press who provides for the solicitation of prositution....
2 1337 4 u!
If someone out of state sues you (or a DA charges you with a criminal offense) in an out of state court, what can they possibly do to make you show up?
They can't send a Michagan State Trooper to Florida to serve papers or forcible bring someone into court (Look at the incident in Texas with the Legislators who left the state for a few days to break quorom, which is a violation of the law, - the state police knew where they were but could not arrest them because they were in Oklahoma).
This is why we need spam laws to be at the Federal level, but even then, our reach won't cover asian spammers (Unless you can get Dubya to declare war on Weapons of Mass Spammage).
From Sec 3 of the Act:
"an e-mail service provider that the sender knew or should have known is located in this state or to an e-mail address that the sender knew or should have known is held by a resident of this state"
Requiring willful conduct or intent as this law does (in Sec 3, not Sec 4) puts a huge burden on the prosecution/plaintiff. With email addresses that have no physical correspondence to the receipt's real address, how is the spammer supposed to "know or should know" if the resident is in Michigan? Once this, nearly unprovable, element is part of the crime, the crime becomes nearly unenforceable. And, all the draconian requirements that got this law the press coverage may be ignored.
I guess the real battle is "can you assume that if a Domain Name is registered to a MI address that the email server is physically in MI?" After all, the Domain Name's mailing address may be a corporate headquarters and the server may be located in Florida.
Sec. 4 of the Act is a good old strict liability requirement (no intent or negligence needed to prove the crime). But, the requirements imposed by Sec. 4 aren't that odd, just standard "truth in advertising" applied to email.
It would be nice to see someone enforce these laws. Every one of these spams leads to someone making money from them - that's why spam exists. Every one of those websites selling viagra knock-offs, or porn, or selling mailing lists can be traced to someone who profits from these sales. Those are the people paying for the spam; make them accountable - cut off the money - and the spammers go away.
California has had "antispam" laws for quite some time - can anyone point to a single prosecution of these laws?
Well, at least "something" in this case isn't worse than nothing... yet... but the way Michigan has been heading, that end seems inevitable.
Any law that says you must label spam (e.g., put ADV: in the subject) has two major flaws:
1) It only addresses half the problem, and it's not the important half. It does nothing to ease the burden on the mail servers that must transport the spammer's trash.
2) It sanctions what would otherwise be an illicit act.
As it is today, the act of spamming may or may not be illegal, but once a law is enacted that says "label it", the spam becomes sanctioned by law. Without that law, a hosting company can dump a user for spamming. With the law, it becomes more difficult because the spammer can say "I followed the law!"
IMHO: We're better off without laws like this.
--Bill
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