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Ohio Law Could Send Spammers To Jail
ej0c writes "We in Ohio are set to save you from Spam. The legislature, with AOL's help, passed a tough anti-spam bill (Reuters). Spam in Ohio, and you'll be in the can for 6 months, with fines of $25,000 per violation, or $2 to $8 per e-mail. Text of the Act."
According to the text of the act, this includes any recipient of spam, defining recipient as:
So, that means that this act is designed to apply to anyone that sends spam to anyone that lives in Ohio, checks their e-mail in Ohio, or has an e-mail service provider/ISP located in Ohio.
How enforceable that is, is really anyone's guess. But I do see it as wise to define spam by who receives it rather than who sends it ("spammers").
I just hope the penalty is $2-$8 per e-mail, or $25,000, whichever is HIGHER.
Hitting em in the pocketbook is usually pretty reliable. Assuming you can enforce it in the first place, but that's another discussion. =P
Erioll
Actually - it is more complex than that - I am a lawyer, although this is not my area of expertise. The general rule is that Federal Law trumps state law - if the feds have "occupied the field", then state law can not conflict. If the feds have not occupied the field, then state and federal law can co-exist. How do you determine if they have occupied the field? Either the feds make a clear statement they do, or some judge somewhere decides that they have made enough rules and regs to effectively rule out state regulation. Since the feds explicitly have a law on this - there is a good chance that a fed judge may decide they occupy the field. Especially since this is, almost by definition, interstate commerce.
Can state anti-spam laws only be passed if states have been expressly granted the power to do so under CAN-SPAM? Or am I missing something?
:)
There is a loophole that allows states to pass anti-spam laws providing they don't address activities already covered under CAN-SPAM. I don't recall the exact details at the moment, but I remember that much. Perhaps a NANAE regular can recall more than I?
Also, I believe that ligitation that started before CAN-SPAM went into effect was allowed to continue, which is how Virginia got to pack their boy away.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Sorry to be the wet blanket, but please don't parody a song about when the US government shot and killed 4 peace activists.
:-/
Never forget.
You dont have to install firefox, go to their ftp server and grab a zip file. I have yet to install firefox.
Wait no more!
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Actually, it's not a matter of federal vs. state law in this case. CAN-SPAM specifically allows for state laws that make it illegal to send unsolicited commercial e-mails with forged headers, misleading subject lines, etc. Fortunately, I live in a state with such a law (Maryland), so I am free to sue many spammers as I please. However, if you send a commercial e-mail with a genuine header, relevant subject line, and opt-out address, your actions are legal under CAN-SPAM.