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Lawmakers Try to Protect Kids From Spam
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Some states have moved to shield children from email peddling porn, alcohol and other adults-only products, the Wall Street Journal reports. Critics say the laws, which establish a registry of kids' email addresses, are unfair to marketers and could create security risks. The debate echoes earlier discussion about a proposed do-not-spam national registry that the Can-Spam Law urged, but which the FTC nixed. This time, though, the registries are moving forward on a state-by-state basis, and facing court challenges from the adult entertainment industry." From the article: "Few email addresses have been placed on the state registries so far. Earlier this week, Utah's registry had 1,992 addresses, and 62 schools had registered their domain names to block emails to student accounts. About 160 companies had submitted their email lists for screening. In Michigan, 3,658 email addresses have been registered, along with 41 school domains. About 170 marketers had applied for screening."
More laws.
I wonder how many sex offenders work for government.
Actually, I find this really overreaching legislation unacceptable for a free society. When you become a parent, you must accept the priviledge of parenting -- don't push it off on me.
When you tax me, regulate me and force me to monitor what your children are doing, you are putting the brunt of parenting on me. I don't want it. I'm responsible and have no had kids before I was ready. Don't ask me to help you, I don't want to.
I want to run my business utilizing every right I was born with -- including speech. If you don't want my e-mails, you can run a white list and bounce everything not in it. Problem solved, by the free market.
I want to run my life without paying for the legal system required to enforce these tyrannical laws. I have no desire to put another lawyer in the district attorney's office. I have no desire to put another cop in a nice office in order to do a parent's job. I have no desire to put another judge on the bench to take away the freedoms of the citizens put in from of them.
Here's a guide to life:
1. Don't have kids until you can support them yourself (including paying for school, food, clothing and shelter).
2. Join a church or community group focused on family. Help your neighbors with kids and they'll help you.
3. Understand that raising a child means having one parent at home. If you have a child, stop spending money on toys and vacations and new cars and new clothes. Focus your money on your child's present and future.
4. Understand that raising a child means constant care. Don't let your child go anywhere without knowing where and with whom. If one parent is home, this is much easier.
If you can't understand these simple procedures (learned over millenia), don't have kids. I don't want to pay for them, I don't want to raise them, and I don't want to provide free daycare for them. It isn't my kid.
It will only work for senders in the US, and that's assuming it would work at all. For the rest of the world, it's a free list of valid email accounts.
...will be for the list to get into the hands of one child molestor.
Then the whole affair will be killed faster than you can say "Don't touch me there, Father Geoghan".
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
So think twice before "death to all marketers".
While protecting children from spam is a noble goal, Utahs method of forcing companies to have a third party check their address databases against blacklists (and having to pay a lot for that) will only catch a small part of the spam, while resulting in a giant overhead.
What worries me most is the definition of "inappropriate sales pitches", which can be heavily fined. What is inappropriate? I run a website for free language training, aimed at adults and kids. What happens if a kid requests the newsletter, but the kids school or parents have put its email address on the blacklist? If some right wing christian decides that teaching children the french names of bodyparts is indecent, will I be fined for making an "inappropriate sales pitches"? Smells like CDA.
Chriss
--
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I don't know why you would bother creating a registry of kid's names & schools that is most likely to be unsecure, infringing on privacy rights, burdening the innocent individual, and is impossible to verify.
How about just stopping the spam with huge fines for the offenders and/or putting them out of business permanently?
I would like to know one person here who thinks that spam emails are a legitimate way to do business.
It is like the electronic equivalent of harassment and email vandalism.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Just some short points:
1. Don't have kids until you can support them yourself (including paying for school, food, clothing and shelter).
The average cost of raising a child is $250,000.
2. Join a church or community group focused on family. Help your neighbors with kids and they'll help you.
The church essentially does what you advocate against the government doing. namely, raising peoples children for them.
3. Understand that raising a child means having one parent at home. If you have a child, stop spending money on toys and vacations and new cars and new clothes. Focus your money on your child's present and future.
Raising children has always entailed both parents working. The single working parent was a concept largely confined to 1950's america. Across the globe and throughout time, both parents have usually needed to work to support a family.
4. Understand that raising a child means constant care. Don't let your child go anywhere without knowing where and with whom. If one parent is home, this is much easier.
See previous point. Also along these lines, in the past, children often worked from quite a young age, usually alongside their parents. The modern school system is in essence an alternative to this, enabling parents to work, without simultaniously supervising their children.
May the Maths Be with you!
"Spammmers that want to comply have got to send their list to the state and the state does the checking. The spammer never gets the registry."
Not that I think it's a problem, but it's absolutely trivial to get a list of kids' addresses in this scenario. I send this list to the sanitation group:
lolita@aol.com
swinger@yahoo.com
bgates123@msn.com
sjobs@apple.com
[...]
They clean it and send me the "allowable email list" back:
swinger@yahoo.com
bgates123@msn.com
sjobs@apple.com
[...]
Oops.