California Tries Spam Ban

Schlemphfer writes "Spammers have likely received their biggest setback yet, when California governor Gray Davis today signed a bill outlawing all unsolicited email sent to and from the state. Two things about this new law stand out: first, it puts the burden on senders to prove that they are sending solicited email. Second, it bans the entire practice of spamming, with no loopholes at all like allowing messages with ADV: in the subject. Keep in mind California has the world's fifth largest economy, and they are planning to enforce the law with fines amounting to $1000 per each piece of spam. This law could be ruinous to spammers when it takes effect January 1st."

Comments

State Resident?

[i.r.id10t]

What has to be a resident in the state to get the benefits of this bill? The human, or the mail server?

Miscarriage of Justice

[TwistedSquare]

When the RIP Act was released in 2000 in the UK, it contained a lot of nasty legislation including some about encryption whereby the burden was placed on people to prove that they did not still have the key. This opened up the possibility of prosecution of innocent parties who could not prove their innocence (and were therefore guilty until proven innocent). While this law is notionally a good idea, does it not create the same problems of senders having to prove their mail was solicited or face being prosecuted? I am not advocating spam of course, just interested on the civil liberties side.

Re:Can we really enforce this?

[MatthewB79]

I think the law is a good idea, but if the execution is flawed, it could be short-lived.

Flawed execution is what this is all about. Do you think Grey Davis has any intention of keeping this up? With the CA recall election now slated for Oct 7th, he will do whatever he can to appeal to "the people" . Even if it's with empty legislation.

Re:Can we really enforce this?

[jqh1]

from the act findings:

(i) Many spammers have become so adept at masking their tracks that they are rarely found, and are so technologically sophisticated that they can adjust their systems to counter special filters and other barriers against spam and can even electronically commandeer unprotected computers, turning them into spam-launching weapons of mass production.

Follow this with one of my favorite (unattributable?) quotes:

"I'll be damned if I'll trust my fate to 12 people who aren't even smart enought to get out of jury duty..."

At spamgourmet.com, which is a disposable email service (i.e., spam *fighting* service), I've receieved angry law-suit-threatening phone calls, emails, etc. from spam recipients when spammers used disposable addresses as "reply-to" or "removal" addresses (in violation of the TOS, btw). The servers are in California, but I'm here in in TX, and I'm so not ready to go to court in CA...

Re:SCOTUS says

[Sphere1952]

Thanks. Between this case and the abortion clinic cases it has been pretty well codified that free speech is the right to speak and be heard by willing listeners. The word 'willing' is very important.

To some extent the 'willing' comes from the right to assemble. If speech was not limited by the willingness of the recipient then you could use free speech rights to disrupt an attempt to assemble.