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Michigan's Proposed Spam Law Called Toughest In U.S.

Posted by timothy on from the just-a-bill dept.

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.'"

3 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Out-of-state by phorm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How does this apply to out-of-state offenders Vs in-state recipients, or in-state offenders Vs out-of-state recipients. I've never really figured out how US law works... too many different states with local discrepencies :-)

    Would sure be nice if you could nail any spammer from anywhere in the US if you're a Michigan system... I bet it'd be a good place to set up an email server too.

  2. How is "unsolicited" defined? by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, I have to say I finally got a Bayesian Spam filter when the Outlook plug in came out so, for now, it's like back in the days when no one knew my email. Only 1 in 20 spams scores less then 98%, and only one in a hundred regular messages score more then 3%. It's fantastic!

    That said, I'd still be for this law, as long as it was fair. That is to say, if the sender had a 'reasonable' expectation that the person expected to receive mail from them (i.e. opt-in, or if you signed up for a service from them and never opted out). Similar to the 'business relationship' in the Telemarketing laws.

    One important thing is to make it clear that you can't sell "lists". I've been sent spams that said "Cd of Opt-in emails" or whatever. It's like, come on. I don't know if I would want to send people to jail for screwing up like that. Jail and very harsh Spam fines should be reserved, IMO for habitual offenders, you know the lowest of the low types like Ralsky, etc, who relay and proxy scan, forge headers, etc.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  3. Re:Most spam uses a forged sender address by RT+Alec · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Section 4 of the bill covers this:

    • (a) Use a third party's internet domain name or third party e-mail address in identifying the point of origin or in stating the transmission path of the commercial e-mail without the third party's consent.
    • (b) Misrepresent any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path of the commercial e-mail.
    • (c) Fail to include in the commercial e-mail the information necessary to identify the point of origin of the commercial e-mail.

    I think it is essential that these sorts of requirements be part of any anti-spam bill. While requiring that the header contain ADV: is nice for the user, what about the operator of the user's ISP? And in particular, what about the operator who runs an honest ISP, does not allow relaying through their servers, yet still gets overloaded with incorrectly directed complaints when a spam shop uses their domain in part of the forged headers? I don't see nearly enough attention paid to that concern (disclaimer: I operate an ISP).