Michigan Enforces Do-Not-Email Registry Law

elanghe writes "The Michigan Attorney General filed suit against two companies sending adult-oriented email messages to the state's children, in violation of the Michigan Children's Protection Registry. A similar law in Utah is being challenged by the porn industry. While the FTC, influenced by the Direct Marketing Association, rejected the idea of a do-not-email registry, have these two states proven anti-spam laws like these — unlike CAN-SPAM — really have teeth?"

Comments

The Love of Money

[eldavojohn]

A similar law in Utah is being challenged by the porn industry.

What's there to challenge? A state makes a perfectly reasonable law that requires you to check an e-mail against a database of registered users who don't want that mail. Take some porn and go to your downtown local metropolis. Now hand out those pornographic pictures to everyone, young and old alike. See how long you can do that until you're arrested. Nobody challenges those laws, why the hell would anybody be able to challenge laws against people who randomly distribute lewd messages online? The least they can do is check if the person has registered not to receive them. Ohhh, that's right. Silly me, porn is a $10 billion dollar industry. They'll just throw money and lawyers at that problem to fix it.

While the FTC, influenced by the Direct Marketing Association, rejected the idea of a do-not-email registry...

Yeah, influenced by a marketing association? Well, if you delve into this deeper, you'll find articles quoting FTC chairman Timothy J. Muris who offered these sage words of wisdom:

More dangerous, he said, was the possibility that spammers might get hold of the list, which would provide them with a gold mine of valid e-mail addresses that would be used for more spam.

"Consumers will be spammed if we do a registry and spammed if we don't," said Muris, who has long opposed the idea.

I'm sure that if you start hitting these companies with $10,000 fines per violation that they would pay attention to the list. And if they stole it, it's all the more fines.

Muris does raise a good point that should be taken into consideration:

Instead of starting a registry, Muris said, the FTC would first push the private sector to agree on a method for electronically authenticating senders of e-mail, which would cut down on spammers' ability to hide their identities and locations. Muris said such authentication is a necessary precursor to any no-spam registry.

I'm not sure how feasible that idea is, however. I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from. Not only would this increase a company's security but it would reduce much of the spam you see that has a legitimate address from a careless company.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Take some porn and go to your downtown local metropolis. Now hand out those pornographic pictures to everyone, young and old alike. See how long you can do that until you're arrested.

Point well taken, but have you been to Las Vegas lately :).

Re:The Love of Money

[giorgiofr]

I'm sure that if you start hitting these companies with $10,000 fines per violation that they would pay attention to the list.

Good luck fining and/or shutting down a fly-by-night company registered in Vanuatu using an anonimous credit card founded via E-Gold.
Unless you barricade yourself behind a US-only barrier of SMTP servers, required by law to apply certain filtering criteria to email *or else* (China, anyone?), you're not going to stop them. And I think the remedy would be far worse than the illness, to be frank.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Increadibly well said. This can't even be touted as a form of censorship either. If people do want to receive such emails, they simply dont have to submit themselves into the registry. Voluntary registers like this to provide protection against spammers should be introduced world wide as soon as possible. The cleaner our e-mail traffic the better.

Re:The Love of Money

[thebdj]

What's there to challenge? A state makes a perfectly reasonable law that requires you to check an e-mail against a database of registered users who don't want that mail. Take some porn and go to your downtown local metropolis. Now hand out those pornographic pictures to everyone, young and old alike. See how long you can do that until you're arrested. Nobody challenges those laws, why the hell would anybody be able to challenge laws against people who randomly distribute lewd messages online? The least they can do is check if the person has registered not to receive them. Ohhh, that's right. Silly me, porn is a $10 billion dollar industry. They'll just throw money and lawyers at that problem to fix it.

Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy. Also, the article isn't clear about the Utah law. It could be using those nice, vague terms that make the law unenforceable and could even target e-mail that was solicited. Remember, people sometimes identify items as spam that really are not.

I'm sure that if you start hitting these companies with $10,000 fines per violation that they would pay attention to the list. And if they stole it, it's all the more fines.

The problem is that a lot of the real spam companies are outside the US. It is sort of hard to enforce US laws outside the US. If a spam company has no office, no location and no connection to the US, it will be hard to enforce. Also $10k per violation will be hard to uphold. If you charge that by millions of e-mails, companies will claim you are asking for unreasonable damages and the truth is you would. The damage caused per spam e-mail is minimal, and certainly not a $10k violation. This idea that the children are being hurt (the articles own words almost) is nothing more then a red herring.

I'm not sure how feasible that idea is, however. I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from. Not only would this increase a company's security but it would reduce much of the spam you see that has a legitimate address from a careless company.

This only hurts ISPs. Watch the way an e-mail hops from router to router, point to point, on the "information super highway". Your statement almost screams, "I do not understand networks or the internet." This is unreasonable and puts blame on providers because of the actions of their users.

Re:The Love of Money

[Billosaur]

Muris does raise a good point that should be taken into consideration:

Instead of starting a registry, Muris said, the FTC would first push the private sector to agree on a method for electronically authenticating senders of e-mail, which would cut down on spammers' ability to hide their identities and locations. Muris said such authentication is a necessary precursor to any no-spam registry.

I'm not sure how feasible that idea is, however. I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from. Not only would this increase a company's security but it would reduce much of the spam you see that has a legitimate address from a careless company.

Feasibility isn't really the issue, because undoubtedly some system can be developed for digitally signing email that could be easily authenticated. The problem comes in a) getting everyone to agree to the standard, b) implementing the standard, and c) getting everyone to use the standard. It really wouldn't do to have competing methods, and all the problems that then come with interoperability. And let's not forget, it has to be difficult to forge; if not, it's a waste of time.

Re:The Love of Money

[tomstdenis]

That's just it though, most spam doesn't originate in the states or Canada. I get quite a bit from south america these days. Hardly any of it is even in English!!!

As an aside: Anyone else notice a lot of spam getting through gmail's filters lately? I routinely wake up to see 10-20 spams in my inbox. Of course I also routinely get more than 100 spams a day, but a 10% miss rate seems a bit high.

Tom

Re:The Love of Money

[Silver Sloth]

Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy. Also, the article isn't clear about the Utah law. It could be using those nice, vague terms that make the law unenforceable and could even target e-mail that was solicited. Remember, people sometimes identify items as spam that really are not.

I don't know about Utah, and IANAL, but here in the UK, you do get prosecuted for sending snailmail pr0n, there are quite stringent laws about what can, and can't be sent via snail mail for this very reason.

Re:The Love of Money

[Tweekster]

They need to go after these assholes for fraud and computer crimes. They are already breaking dozens of laws to get the spam to you in the first place. Why do they need aspam law? It is just another law on the books, that is much weaker than nailing them for 2,000,000 counts of fraud, and unauthorized use of computer systems (the zombies etc). They would need a calculator to figure out the time. It would only take a couple of cases where the spammer went to prison for 10 sentances of 5 years to be served consecutively. The rest of the spammers that think it isnt a big deal would quickly change their minds. Sieze absolutely everything they own also.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you do not know the definition of the word "Feasibility". You say its not a problem, then go on to list all of the problems that have to be overcome.

Re:The Love of Money

[faloi]

Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy.

If we were talking about normal spam, then you'd be right. However, we're talking about adult-oriented spam. That takes it out of the free speech arena

Re:The Love of Money

[andrewman327]

I think the answer is better spam filters. My mother uses her Verizon e-mail account extensively and barely touches her Gmail account. The Verizon.net account is getting hit hard by spam now, but my Gmail account is almost entirely clean of spam entering the inbox. I salute the Great State of Michigan for its initiative, but most e-mail providers can do a much better job of stopping spam that has already been sent. A few years ago, people were proclaiming the end of the communicative medium as spam became the majority of e-mails. Thanks to advances in filtering, I now receive fewer spams than I did then.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

As an aside: Anyone else notice a lot of spam getting through gmail's filters lately?

No, I haven't. But then again I'm not foolish enough to hand over the contents of all of my email to an advertising company.

Re:The Love of Money

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

You could say the same thing about piracy, but even after the huge scene busts there are still plenty of people that consider it worth the risk.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail

As one of those companies, we do keep the records of where everything came from. But you don't need to ask us; it is written into the header of the email you receive - the top most line. But you will find the IP address belongs to Aunt Mae who was wondering why her computer was running so slow. Your trail dead-ends there.

You are woefully misinformed if you think spam is the result of anyone being careless.

Re:The Love of Money

[bhmit1]

More dangerous, he said, was the possibility that spammers might get hold of the list, which would provide them with a gold mine of valid e-mail addresses that would be used for more spam.

Then only distribute the registry as a set of hashes. Simply run a hash on the email you want to send to, and skip it if it matches a hash in the registry. This has the added benefit of making the spammers waste a little more cpu time before filling our inboxes.

Re:The Love of Money

[Rydia]

The supreme court has drawn a clear distinction between speech that can be censored by parents and speech that can't. You can send whatever in snail mail because, the court reasoned, adults have an opportunity to ensure that it doesn't reach the family proper by censoring it at the mailbox. The situation with spam is much more complicated. It'd make an interesting case.

Re:The Love of Money

[tomstdenis]

Yeah because all other mail providers are totally above board and legit. And even if you run your own, unless you encrypt all your emails what says your ISP doesn't snoop port 25 traffic?

In other words, "your face, shut it."

Google is no more evil than I just assume they are. I'm sure they single me out on a daily basis, amongst their millions of users because I'm the top shit. Hell, I've had the CIA after me since I was 11, yada yada.

The type of spam I'm getting doesn't seem well targetted [thus not the product of indepth google research]. They're mostly not in English [or French, the only two langs I speak] and usually selling things like new screensavers [I don't run windows], children, xanax, etc...

If they were really targetting me they'd be trying to sell me shit I could actually use [and or talk about].

Tom

Re:The Love of Money

[Gorm the DBA]

Would you be so kind as to cite the portion of the Constitution that excludes "adult oriented" from the first amendment?

"Obscene" is a legally defined (albeit very loosey goosey and hard to know exactly where the line is) term, but the mere fact that material is of interest to Adults does not exempt it from First Amendment protection.

In this case, the issue is that Interstate Commerce is involved. You're attempting to subject a company based in, let's say Maine, to Utah's laws, becase an e-mail address that is not clearly marked as belonging to someone in Utah (let's say "@gmail.com") does. That's exactly the kind of thing that is supposed to be within the purview of Federal Regulation, not State powers.

Otherwise, what keeps South Carolina from saying "Anyone that provides an e-mail advocating kissing shall be publically flogged, unless they pay us $20 per e-mail address they want to send this to to check it against our list of folks who think girls have cooties". It's the same exact law

Re:The Love of Money

[TheRaven64]

I don't know about Utah, and IANAL, but here in the UK, you do get prosecuted for sending snailmail pr0n, there are quite stringent laws about what can, and can't be sent via snail mail for this very reason.

Any chance you could post a link to a case history here? As far as I am aware, the last attempt to prosecute under the UKs indecency laws was over Lady Chatterly's Lover and was (quite literally) laughed out of court. Now, if you'd said child pornography, it would have been been a different matter...

Re:The Love of Money

[castoridae]

Yeah - but in Vegas, notice how they have to stand in those little slices of land between the casino properties - city-owned land - because casino security won't let them distribute it on their private property which extends all the way to the street.

Funny how that works; the CASINOS of all entities are the ones enforcing "decency." :-)

Re:The Love of Money

[crunch_ca]

Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy.

http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/pornography/unsoli cmail.htm has a nice description of what to do if you're getting unsolicited snail mail with pornographic content. Quoted from the page:

You do not have to receive an offensive mailing before you have the right to tell adult businesses that you do not want to receive their advertisements. Federal law 39 U.S.C. 3010 specifically gives you the right to prevent all unsolicited sexually oriented mailings from being sent to you and to your children that are under 19 years of age and living in your home.

But I don't know how that relates to snail-spam delivered from outside the US. It also doesn't cut down on the non-porn snail-spam.

For me, unsolicited mail that I get at home goes straight to recycling. Unsolicited e-mail that I get goes straight to my Bayesian filters. It would save a lot of trees if I didn't get unsolicited snail mail. It would save a lot of bandwidth if I didn't get spam.

Re:The Love of Money

[dustyd63]

Isn't the point of a Do Not E-mail list to make it public and then put the restriction on it of not e-mailing anyone on that list? Otherwise, it is worthless to have such a list if the spammers don't even know who not to spam.

The spammers wouldn't have to steal the list - it would be given to them. So, the whole thing is used against everyone when non-USA residents download the list and add it to their to-spam list

Re:The Love of Money

[Tweekster]

That scheme you just proposed would honestly take a matter of hours to find out who owns the account, most people even other countries will comply with a subpeona.

Re:The Love of Money

[!eopard]

The obvious way to use a 'do not register' list while not letting spammers get hold of it, is to filter every e-mail through a secure server instance that checks the register and filters e-mails to those people on the list. Bonus is that all e-mails can be saved in the one location for your NSA to have fun with ;)

Re:The Love of Money

[Creepy]

bravo - I was going to post something much the same.

I think the only way enforcing a law like that would be to go after anybody in the US that is caught hiring offshore work for spam purposes. It would be hard to go after the pornographers unless they are the ones actually sending the spam because most of the time it's legal to create it where they are located. I seriously doubt that most porn mail originates in someplace like China or my spam box would be filled with Hot, Horny Asians just waiting for you - I'm pretty sure it's mostly outsourced from somebody in the US. I do get a few Russian, Asian, and Black e-mails like that, but 95% of them point to US sites tauting caucasian girls. Rarely do these get into my in-box (and if the filter catches them it blocks all links back to the site unless I release it to my inbox), but I sometimes lose legitimate mails like my Am-Ex bill (though I'm still messing with sensitivity settings)

Re:The Love of Money

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Yeah, I'm walking down the Strip, holding my daughter's hand, my wife is next to me holding my other daughter's hand. This idiot tries to shove an escort service flyer at me.

I mean, what are these idiots thinking?

Re:The Love of Money

[humble.fool]

Plus, I've walked down the strip at legal age, but with a group of highschoolers - they don't even approach anyone who looks under 21.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

And even if you run your own,

Which I do.

unless you encrypt all your emails

Again, I do. Which is very feasible for me, since I rarely do email other than internal email at work.

what says your ISP doesn't snoop port 25 traffic?

Assuming you can actually read, see the above.

If they were really targetting me

So, google doesn't do targeted advertising (albeit not spam)? Wow. You are dumber then even I thought.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy."

Junk fax laws withstood legal challeges based on the first amendment. I can't see e-mail-related laws being any different in this respect.

Re:The Love of Money

[tomstdenis]

Um, there is difference between them showing you ads based on your email and them sending your email keywords to spammers.

I mean what is the threat? THEY CAN ALREADY READ MY GMAIL messages that are unencrypted. If I encrypt my emails [say with GPG] then their targetted ads will be on the keywords they can see like PGP, Encrypted and Message.

I'm contending that Google does not send out keywords from our emails to spammers. The evidence, albeit anecdotal, is based on the fact that none of my ads are targetted towards things I actually talk about in my plaintext emails.

Tom

Re:The Love of Money

[giorgiofr]

Oh no, you are mistaken. First of all the gov't of Vanuatu disregards any communication which doesn't become bothersome enough (1st level). If and when the gov't decides to actually read the documents they have been sent, they simply hide behind their secrecy laws (2nd level). If the case is big (as in, "plot for world domination" big, not a spammer running loose) they might force the local bank or corporation to spit out the names of the real owners - unfortunately they happen to be Ben Dover and Mike Hunt (3rd level, and the economy of Vanuatu collapses as a result, so they won't reach this stage easily). Should they decide to follow the money, it would lead them to an E-Gold funded account, which is accessed via Tor & co. The trail is lost.
What you say applies to most 1st world countries but there are some, around, that depend on this kind of services and a subpoena won't bother them in the slightest.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how feasible that idea is, however. I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from.

but then you fall into the relm of suing the wrong person and become like the RIAA (Suing a grandmother with no computer, suing a dead guy), then you have privacy concerns, notice how many email servers show up on slashdot about those? gmail had a big one not long ago, AOL comes under fire, Hotmail (though that is the biggest spam collecter there is).

Re:The Love of Money

[contiguously]

According to the CAN-SPAM act, commercial e-mails must include valid e-mail headers, cannot contain misleading subject lines, and must provide a way to opt-out. The penalties of not following this would be fines upwards of $11,000.

Most of the SPAM I get breaks all three conditions. So what makes you think that an opt-out list is going to deter spammers?

Re:The Love of Money

[kalirion]

They're thinking that they don't give a damn what you do with the flyer, they just have to hand them all out. It's not like they get commission.

Re:The Love of Money

[Electrum]

I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from. Not only would this increase a company's security but it would reduce much of the spam you see that has a legitimate address from a careless company.

This only hurts ISPs. Watch the way an e-mail hops from router to router, point to point, on the "information super highway". Your statement almost screams, "I do not understand networks or the internet." This is unreasonable and puts blame on providers because of the actions of their users.

His post was dead-on. It is you who does not understand how email works. Mail is not normally relayed. All relays need to be secure and correctly identify the sender.

Re:The Love of Money

[kalirion]

So are you saying it's legal to send unsolicited non-kiddy porn to random physical addresses? I think a large portion of parents in the U.S. and U.K. would be upset enough to take legal action if little Johnny comes from the mailbox carrying hardcore porn.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

sure bring your kids to vegas, and then complain its not suitible for the family.

Re:The Love of Money

[sik puppy]

"Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy. Also, the article isn't clear about the Utah law. It could be using those nice, vague terms that make the law unenforceable and could even target e-mail that was solicited. Remember, people sometimes identify items as spam that really are not."

Try this: http://www.usps.com/forms/_pdf/ps1500.pdf

Its a form for banning explicit mail. However nothing says it has to be porn, so it works against every mailing firm. And they don't want to have the postal service after them - some of those laws have serious teeth.

Re:The Love of Money

[Tweekster]

Let me know when you find a spammer smart enough to do 1 of those things, let alone all of them flawlessly

Re:The Love of Money

[inviolet]

Then only distribute the registry as a set of hashes. Simply run a hash on the email you want to send to, and skip it if it matches a hash in the registry. This has the added benefit of making the spammers waste a little more cpu time before filling our inboxes.

Do you know where spammers get their CPU time?

Indeed, the future of the internet seems to be a war over computing cycles, in the same way that the snail world was (is) a war over energy. Well, the world mostly fights over real estate, but that is at heart a fight over two things: ease of access to energy, and living areas with low energy requirements.

In any case, they are fighting to pilfer CPU cycles, which are then directed towards the most profitable endeavor that spare distributed CPU cycles can be applied to: sending spam, blackmail DDOSing, etc. But that will change as more we'll-buy-your-CPU-cycles projects come online, SETI@home and BOINC being the pioneer of course. At that time, the owners of zombie networks may switch over from spamming to something more socially and fiscally constructive.

Sorry, I'm rambling. What were we talking about again? :)

Oh yeah, hashing the do-not-email list. How long could that thing take to get brute-forced? The entropy value of a typical email address is low: maybe 15 characters from a ~30-character charset? That doesn't seem like too hard of a thing to brute-force, if you're the owner of a big zombie network.

In fact I remember when somebody brute-forced the entire AOL userlist just by sending test pings to the AOL email server: AAAAAAA@AOL.COM, nope. AAAAAAB@AOL.com, nope. AAAAAAC@AOL.COM, nope.....

Re:The Love of Money

[idiot900]

Simply run a hash on the email you want to send to, and skip it if it matches a hash in the registry.

Don't be ridiculous. All the spammer needs to do is check his/her entire database and save all addresses that cause a hash match. Sounds like 10 lines of Perl and an hour or two on a single PC.

Re:The Love of Money

[Punt3r]

Except it doesn't work that way. There's no money in it for the state if they do it that way; you see, they've set it up so you have to PAY to scrub your list. Every 30 days. YOU do the hashing, and send your list to them, and they give you back a list of matches. Costs "up-to" 3 cents per address checked (not matched). See Administrative Rules, R 484.511: https://www.protectmichild.com/senders/

Re:The Love of Money

[norman619]

I suggest you try using your Gmail account when registering for different forums and such. You will find after doign this on a few sites you will start to get hammered. No spam filter can get rid of the majority of spam. That's a pipe dream. Only way to get rid of spam on your system is to set your email app to only allow email form your contact/address list to get through. If they are not on either list they get tossed into the trash. I have 2 domains. Both email addresses listed in the whois info are hammered with junk. All the other email accounts I have created which are not posted for all the world to see are junk free. Only becasue I don't use them for anything other than business. I use a special junk account when applying for membership to different sites. Big suprise it's become the mother of all junkmail magnets. Mind you the places I sign up with claim to not sell or share your address with anyone if you select this little box telling them no. LOL!!! You also can't control what others do with your email address. :-) Your claim that "better filters" will reduce the problem is not true. The best draconian filters will stop the email but they will also add some administrative tasts to your email exp. The best practice is not to hand out your regular email to anyone other than those you truest. Do not use it to register with ANY website other than banking stitutions and so on. Maintain a current list of contacts and block all but the people on this list in. It's a pain but you can have a junk free email in box. It's something akin to what China does. It's not a bad idea but you have to be willing to maintain your filters. If you don't you will miss important emails and give up on it.

Re:The Love of Money

[gbulmash]

"What's there to challenge?"

AFAIK, there's a per-address fee for every address you want to check against the registry. And since:

• an address can be added at any time
• having a record of a double-opt-in request to be on your list is no defense
• it seems you have to stop mailing that address upon registration, not after a period of time

You basically have to clean your whole list pretty frequently and you have to pay each time you do. Furthermore, since each state is setting up their own registry, if you're cleaning your lists weekly and your list is big enough to cost $1,000 per state, you could end up having fees of $2,600,000 annually to clean a list of about 250,000 people (or less).

Furthermore, since the states are collecting the fees, one could argue that it's a tax, and it's a tax that the states are imposing on out of state businesses, meaning it's taxation without representation. I seem to recall we fought a big war with England over that around 230 years ago.

The politicians are saying "it's for the kids". That way, if you oppose their ill-conceived power/money grabs, they can portray you as anti-kid. But on the other hand, this is being done by the less corrupt state officials because they can't get the sinfully corrupt federal officials to do anything about it.

In the long run, it's the wrong solution to let states have their own lists and regulate the behaviors of out-of-state companies. OTOH, unless the Feds step in and put in a system with teeth that shuts down homegrown spam and classifies offshore spam a border incursion that can be met with military force, I can understand the frustration of the states. I don't agree with their methods, but I understand their desire to get *something* done.

- Greg

Re:The Love of Money

[giorgiofr]

Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Spammer! First, I am not a criminal, so if even I can come up with such a scheme, I am sure they can do better. Second, how do you think they pay for their botnets, receive payments for their sponsors, and in general run their business? I suspect that the majority of spammers (just like the majority of muggers and burglars) is made up of clueless guys who get caught at the first opportunity, yet the minority made up by smart ones is not as small as you seem to think.

Re:The Love of Money

[kbielefe]

Would you be so kind as to cite the portion of the Constitution that excludes "adult oriented" from the first amendment?

Certainly. Please see Roth v. United States and Miller v. California.

...the mere fact that material is of interest to Adults does not exempt it from First Amendment protection.

The mere fact that the material is being distributed to minors and/or unwilling third parties does.

In this case, the issue is that Interstate Commerce is involved. ... That's exactly the kind of thing that is supposed to be within the purview of Federal Regulation, not State powers.

You are oversimplifying the commerce clause. The fact that a business operates across state lines does not preclude individual states from applying their own restrictions, as long as they do not contradict federal regulations.

For example, you still pay state and local sales tax on things you buy in a local store, even if none of the products sold were actually produced in the state. For another example, in order for an insurance salesperson in a national call center to conduct business with a customer in another state, he or she must hold a license issued by that state.

Every business must comply with all federal and state laws, unless the state law is struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Thousands of businesses do just fine with this restriction; obscene spammers should be no different. In fact, supreme court decisions have specifically said that community standards must be applied in deciding what is obscene. There is an undue burden standard, but I find it hard to believe a court will rule that checking 50 blacklist databases is an undue burden for a business that handles databases of millions of email addresses.

Re:The Love of Money

[Kaikopere]

I use a special junk account when applying for membership to different sites.

For sites that need a "real" e-mail address to get in touch with me, I use http://sneakemail.com/ Everyone gets a unique address, so when the spam hits, I know where the spammer found the address. If someone starts abusing the privilege of being able to communicate with me electronically, I shut off the e-mail address, as one of my credit card companies discovered recently. All in all a very useful service for those of us that are too busy to set it up for ourselves.

Re:The Love of Money

[Darth_brooks]

Part of the justification for junk fax laws is that there is a tangible material loss from unsolicited faxes. Junk snail mail still requires that a company shell out the cost of printing, materials, postage, etc. With junk faxes, that cost is transferred to the fax machine's owner. Paper and toner are easily accountable losses. One junk fax equals two cents worth of paper, four cents in toner, etc. Whereas the best tangible loss you can argue with junk e-mail is a waste of bandwidth.

Now, before you go bouncing off the walls about how a "time is money", I agree. The time I waste with spam does have an eventual monetary cost. But there's not as direct of a consumables cost with junk e-mail vs. junk faxes. If I'm a corporate beancounter, I can sit down and figure the losses spam causes by coming up with a big formula, charts, graphs, and the like. And It'll get me no where. But I can put a nice, direct cost on junk faxes. Five toner carts., two reams of paper. That's tangible. That gets a law passed.

(yeah, I know, there's lost bandwidth, lost electricity, lost productivity, etc. But the gist of the junk fax law is "don't waste the stuff I paid for." The junk fax laws could have been written around the lost electricity and phone service (which would have easily equated to the losses cause by spam), but they weren't. Yeah obfuscated short sighted laws!)

Re:The Love of Money

[mrcolj]

Granted, in the US, there need to be hefty fines, but the ACLU has always, and probably always will, fight to defend the "rights" of those marketing porn to children. That's just who they are and how they are--check their website. The only solution that really works is the good old fashioned Okipoki/BlackFrog/BlueFrog anti-spam vigilanteism. What the world needs now is frontier justice. If the law won't protect you, if your kids are molested or someone you know is killed, wake up and fix the problem in any way necessary.

Re:The Love of Money

[mapkinase]

Vanuatu... US have to crack on the countries who allow scum like that to exist.

As for laws... I am pretty sure public lashing of the violators would help.

Re:The Love of Money

[kbielefe]

You can send whatever in snail mail

That's not entirely accurate. You can't send unsolicited obscene material in snail mail. Obscene material also cannot be visible on the outside of the envelope or package. If you apply those same standards (which were found constitutional a long time ago) to the new technology of email, complying with an obscene spam blacklist seems a mild restriction.

Re:The Love of Money

[Kadin2048]

I'm sure that if you start hitting these companies with $10,000 fines per violation that they would pay attention to the list. And if they stole it, it's all the more fines.

The problem isn't the companies that you can sue. The problem is that the registry will get out to all the fly-by-night operations, using botnetted Windows boxes, or open relays in China, selling "V14GrA" from websites that are linked to front companies in countries with lax banking laws.

The companies that you can actually sue are only a very small part of the problem. No entity currently has the resources and the motivation to track down (by following the money trail) the majority of criminal spammers; until that changes, it doesn't make sense to try to legislate spam away. At best, you're doing nothing but creating feel-good legislation.

The only way I could see something like this working, is if at the same time you created the laws with the huge penalties, you also set up an office which investigated spam, and was funded through the fines it generated. (After being jump-started with sufficient capital.) Or you could put out some sort of a cash bounty on reporting spammers -- 20% of the fines collected, perhaps -- and let private industry do it, like bounty hunters do with bail-jumpers today. But there's not a whole lot of point in creating a "do not email" list that you can't possibly enforce: you'll just have created a target list at that point.

Re:The Love of Money

[arkhan_jg]

Yes, but it's almost entirely a few American spammers sending spam advertising crap products to Americans, priced in dollars and shipping in the US. The rest is made up of nigerian scammers and phishers, but those are already illegal under fraud laws.

The mail might route via asian open hosts, but the problem is largely American. Anything that affects US spammers would have a huge impact on world spam. Mind you, the Russians are getting in on the act, so they'll need to tackled head on as well in an ideal world.

I agree with you about the 'last host' problem though, the ISPs would end up carrying the bulk of the costs. Still, might shut down pink ticket ISP's for good, as they'd have to levy the fine upwards on their customers. Still, it smacks of breaching common carrier, which is tricky.

Better to just fine the seller of the goods. After all, they have a website, it's linked in the email, and it's selling a product (porn, drugs etc etc) in a manner against the law.

Re:The Love of Money

[arkhan_jg]

Just as evidence, look at the ROKSO list - almost all Americans.

Re:The Love of Money

[Tim C]

Funny how that works; the CASINOS of all entities are the ones enforcing "decency." :-)

They're enforcing not having people potentially harrassing paying customers and possibly scaring them off; I don't suppose morality comes into it for a second.

Re:The Love of Money

[Rod.Dorman]

You are oversimplifying the commerce clause. The fact that a business operates across state lines does not preclude individual states from applying their own restrictions, as long as they do not contradict federal regulations.
For example, you still pay state and local sales tax on things you buy in a local store, even if none of the products sold were actually produced in the state.

This example deals with a physical product in a physical store. How would this translate to e-mail sent and received electronically?

How would one determine which Do-Not-Email list to examine? Even if there were some reliable method of mapping a domain to a physical location the person using the e-mail address could live somewhere else entirely. You'd have to check against every single list in existence whose restrictions you might be subject to.

Taking the Michigan list as an example one has to pay a fee to check their list https://www.protectmichild.com/compliance.html

A fee is charged per contact point checked to cover the cost of maintaining the registry and enforcing the law. The fee is currently set at seven tenths of a cent ($0.007).

If every rinky dink municipality decides to do this it would get
prohibitively expensive to send an e-mail.

Re:The Love of Money

[kbielefe]

This example deals with a physical product in a physical store. How would this translate to e-mail sent and received electronically?

Did you intentionally block out the insurance license example?

You'd have to check against every single list in existence whose restrictions you might be subject to.

That's why I favor simpler options like a family friendly tld, or an "adult spam only allowed here" tld. However, those have had a difficult time getting off the ground.

If every rinky dink municipality decides to do this it would get prohibitively expensive to send an e-mail.

No, it would get prohibitively expensive to send an unsolicited, obscene email. The porn industry did just fine before the email era without being able to send unsolicited, obscene snail mail. I don't think it's that much of a problem for obscene spammers to limit themselves to people who have entered their email addresses at some other porn site. I get a lot of spam, but I only get spam I consider obscene maybe twice a year. That's still too much for my children's inboxes. I don't want to be forced to invade their privacy by censoring every email they receive.

Most "rinky dink municipalities" realize that the state is the most appropriate level to handle the problem. Besides, the federal government would intervene before it got to that point. Of course, if that happens, all the childless slashdotters will inexplicably become spammer's rights activists again.

Re:The Love of Money

[Rod.Dorman]

Did you intentionally block out the insurance license example?

No but that suffers from the same notion of physical presence. Besides, advertising isn't conducting business, its a solicitation to do so.

You'd have to check against every single list in existence whose restrictions you might be subject to.

That's why I favor simpler options like a family friendly tld, or an "adult spam only allowed here" tld. However, those have had a difficult time getting off the ground.

No kidding :-) but these "Do-Not-" lists are here now and could easily catch on as a thing-to-do by politicians who want to look good.

If every rinky dink municipality decides to do this it would get prohibitively expensive to send an e-mail.

No, it would get prohibitively expensive to send an unsolicited, obscene email.

Thats only one of the categories on Michigan's list, see https://www.protectmichild.com/compliance.html/ for the full list. Theres a bit of scary wording stating "...include, but are not necessarily limited to:" which could encompass anything they feel like.

Most "rinky dink municipalities" realize that the state is the most appropriate level to handle the problem. Besides, the federal government would intervene before it got to that point.

You have a higher opinion of government than I do :-)

Of course, if that happens, all the childless slashdotters will inexplicably become spammer's rights activists again.

Don't get stuck on focusing only on child protection. This "Do-Not-" list approach could be applied towards any category of e-mail to any category of recipient.

How does it work?

[telchine]

Does everyone in the world have to check these databases, or just if you're sending mail from inside of the US?

Re:How does it work?

[porkmusket]

It works questionably, because no one HAS to use the database. There need to be clear and enforcable punishments for not using it in order to get people to use it. If a couple cases get attention and the spammers pay out, more suits could possible be filed, but obviously you'll have trouble suing some dude in Nigeria. Personally, as a victim of the whole Blue Security crap that ended up with a whole lot more spam after that DB was compromised, I am reluctant to sign up for these sorts of lists and would rather protect my inbox by being discrete about who I give email information to. It not's too much trouble to hit the 'junk' button on the mails that occassionally sneak past the filter in my opinion. However it's nice to see them trying. We suffered decades of phone abuse by solicitors before laws and structures were in place to prevent it, but that's still more of a domestic issue... doing the same thing with email is not going to be nearly as easy. At this point, I am not sure what can be done other than moving to challenge/response systems, which I plan on doing on my next email server.

Re:How does it work?

[Andy_R]

Nobody has to check against these databases at all.

The options for bulk mailers are:
1) Check against them
2) Only mail people who have opted in
or best of all
3) Don't send adult-oriented spam at all.

Re:How does it work?

[vertinox]

Does everyone in the world have to check these databases, or just if you're sending mail from inside of the US?

1. Are you sending spam?
2. Does your country have an extradition agrement with the US?

Re:How does it work?

[gstoddart]

The options for bulk mailers are:
1) Check against them
2) Only mail people who have opted in
or best of all
3) Don't send adult-oriented spam at all.

Well, those are our favourite choices. They still have:

4) Send to anyone and don't fsck'ing concern yourself about it since you're using a bunch of zombies to do the work anyway.

I mean, seriously, do you really think the bulk mailers feel constrained by your three options? Clearly not, because I see so much crap which claims it can't be spam because I must have opted in it's not even remotely funny (and by extenstion, if I'd just use the handy-dandy mail-authentication link, they promise not to send me any more until the next time).

The people who bulk-mail/spam don't give a damn about what you want. They just do it.

Cheers

Will someone please think of the children....

[B11]

oh wait

Re:Will someone please think of the children....

[Anonymous Coward]

the state's children

Now that's scary.

Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill all spammers ! As "standard" for porn industry - nobody forces you to go out and buy or watch porn.

Been to Las Vegas lately?

[krell]

"Take some porn and go to your downtown local metropolis. Now hand out those pornographic pictures to everyone, young and old alike"

Have you been to Las Vegas lately? That's exactly what is happening there now. These guys line the streets aggressively handing out what looks like hooker trading cards (really advertisements)

Re:Been to Las Vegas lately?

[Tweekster]

And the City of Las Vegas /State already has a law against that, it has been not enforced, but it is a perfectly legit law.

Re:Been to Las Vegas lately?

[AndersOSU]

And i just collected a Miss Veluptia - she had 450 homeruns last season.

I'm looking to complete the set, so if anyone has Foxy Downtown let me know, I'd be willing to trade.

How about

[giorgiofr]

How about we behave sensibly for a change? Scneario: the pr0n guys don't spam children with nekkid b00bi3z (wake up pr0n guy, children have no credit cards and probably no interest in pr0n yet); and the gov't does not pass laws restricting said b00bi3z.
Hey, I can dream...

Re:How about

[$RANDOMLUSER]

And when you're spamflooding through a Russian botnet, how exactly does one determine that the target email address belongs to a "think of teh children"?

Re:How about

[AndersOSU]

Clearly they're trying to develop brand loyalty in these youngsters. It is a page right out of Phillip Morris's marketing playbook.

Re:How about

[Anonymous Coward]

the people who want these registries consider pubescent teenagers who have access to their parents credit cards as 'children'. these particular 'children' DO want porn and can find a card to pay for it with.

Non-miner? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

What about us non-minors here? Not all of us want spam, do we have to impregnate some woman to be eligible for this kind of protection? :)... And ofcourse move to one of theese two countries of which you speak.

What about non-porn spam, like the nigeria passport scam, and all that valium crap? I don't see it providing a defence against that.

Re:Non-miner? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do we have to impregnate some woman, we also have to move to Michigan or Utah. And you can't find a decent bagel in either state.

we should be thanking them...

[Mark19960]

Send these guys in Michigan a thank-you note for creating laws that have some bite.
Use Michigan as an example for your own politicians....

The feds cannot do it, they are too corrupt with big industry hanging dollar bills in their faces.
On the state level, its a little bit less corrupt and you actually have SOME chance of getting a
law against spam thru.

Re:we should be thanking them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal, State? To be implemented it needs to be world wide if we want to stop the spammers! Some laws with fines are just going to make spammers work harder, i feel sorry for those home users with open access points...

Re:we should be thanking them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, State, for creating a narrowly focused law that you can't possibly enforce broadly enough to make useful.

Re:we should be thanking them...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're welcome.
-Some random guy from the mitten.

Re:we should be thanking them...

[Anonymous Coward]

The feds cannot do it, they are too corrupt with big industry hanging dollar bills in their faces.

What a rediculous statement. Everybody knows you have to wave $100 bills, minimum, to get their attention.

Cart ahead of the horse

[davmoo]

have these two states proven anti-spam laws like these -- unlike CAN-SPAM -- really have teeth?"

Folks, we're putting the proverbial cart *way* ahead of the horse here. This law doesn't have teeth until it produces a win in a courtroom. In the US, I can file a suit against anyone reading this message just because I don't like you're hair color...but that doesn't mean I'm going to win that suit.

Re:Cart ahead of the horse

[Trevin]

Not only do they need to produce a win against a plaintiff in the U.S., but also against a foreign spammer. Otherwise all the spam houses have to do is move overseas.

I just don't understand...

[MorderVonAllem]

...why everybody doesn't just whitelist. Sure some spam may get by but it removes 99% of it right off the bat. Everything that isn't on my whitelist isn't email I want in the first place.

Re:I just don't understand...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Why even put your email address somewhere public in the first place?

Whitelisting is very impractical for people that do email support of any kind, even if its just being the leader/owner of a website or project. Sometimes people need to contact you, and frankly email is still the best way.

Re:I just don't understand...

[TheRaven64]

Whitelisting is an impractical solution. How do you add someone to your whitelist? It's fine if you only exchange email with a small number of friends, but beyond that you can only email people you have already communicated with out-of-band. If the out-of-band channel you use is well-defined then all you do is move the spam there.

Re:I just don't understand...

[Ginger Unicorn]

you could tell anyone requiring support to put [SOME KEYWORDS] in the subject line and whitelist anyone with that subject.

Re:I just don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope none of your friends or family members ever change their emails, or no new friends try to email before you've had a chance to add them to their whitelist. And forget trying to get any sort of confirmation from companies you deal with, because they never tell you what address they'll be sending those from. Whitelisting is just impractical.

Re:I just don't understand...

[MorderVonAllem]

Sure, but the article is talking about emails to private individuals and not companies.

Re:I just don't understand...

[Haeleth]

Sure, but the article is talking about emails to private individuals and not companies.

What does that have to do with anything? Plenty of private individuals, such as myself, run websites and support things online.

Michigan residents will get pounded

[base3]

When it was possible to listwash against the BlueFrog list, the Russian v1@gr@ and r013x spammers pounded the people who had opted out with threats and used their names in spoofed From: headers. I assume we can expect the same for this list. What's Michigan going to do? Extradite the Russian mafia?

Re:Michigan residents will get pounded

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Michigan going to do? Extradite the Russian mafia? Apparently you are not familiar with the Michigan Militia...

I see a new spam subject line coming soon:

[krell]

"Not all of us want spam, do we have to impregnate some woman to be eligible for this kind of protection? :)... "

I see a new subject line coming soon to email boxes everywhere to advertise this:
"Fr3e S3x wiht OUR Russian Models to STOP SP4M"

Trading cards

[krell]

"I'm looking to complete the set, so if anyone has Foxy Downtown let me know, I'd be willing to trade."

You need to hook up with other collectors to play the game "Gasmic: The Gathering". You'll get a lot more cards that way.

A Do-Not-Email registry will not work

[Anonymous Coward]

The do-not-call list does not apply to anything that you have agreed to.
Almost everytime you sign up for free online things, open an account on a site, give out your email for a mailing list, give out your email for a store, etc, there is somewhere in the fine print that says that you agree that the site you are signing up for and its affiliates can use your email and an affliate can mean anything. Say you sign up a forum that lets you download torrents or a place that gives you free subscription to a magazine, they can give your e-mail to an "affliate". Those "affliates" can give your e-mail to an affliate of theirs and so on. Somewhere down the line, bam you will get spam.

I sign up for pretty much everything under a spam e-mail account and leave my regular gmail account for reputable places. I've gotten maybe 30 spam e-mails to my gmail account in 2 years. My spam account gets hundreds per day. The reality is that there isn't a way to stop it, because somewhere down the line, I signed up for something that told me that they would give my e-mail address out.

I'm in Michigan

[Anonymous Coward]

At first when I saw this article I was thinking it was a good thing. I was even wondering if it could be extended to non-children.

But then I went and looked at the website ... as a potential business owner I have problems with it. It looks like I have to pay 7 tenths of a penny to check an email address. Let's say I have a list of 10,000 addresses, it is going to cost me $70 to check it? And that has to be done every month in case a new address matches.

And whose definition of obscene do we use?

And what child has a fax machine?

Re:I'm in Michigan

[laffer1]

If you sell any items you have to check unless you like jailtime.

From their website:

  Under the law, "a person shall not send, cause to be sent, or conspire with a third party to send a message to a contact point that has been registered for more than 30 calendar days with the department if the primary purpose of the message is to, directly or indirectly, advertise or otherwise link to a message that advertises a product or service that a minor is prohibited by law from purchasing, viewing, possessing, participating in, or otherwise receiving."

The covered categories of messages include, but are not necessarily limited to:

        * Alcohol (MCL 436.1701)
        * Tobacco (MCL 722.641)
        * Pornography or Obscene Material (MCL 722.673-722.677, MCL 750.142-750.143, 47 USC 231(e)(6))
        * Gambling (MCL 432.218)
        * Illegal Drugs (MCL 333.7401)
        * Firearms (MCL 750.223,MCL 28.422)

Marketers who fail to comply with the law face criminal penalties of up to three years in jail, and criminal fines of up to $30,000. In addition, marketers may face civil penalties of up to $5,000 per message sent in violation of the law, to a maximum of $250,000 per day. Civil suits may be filed by the Michigan attorney general, Internet service providers, and parents on behalf of their children.

Re:I'm in Michigan

[operagost]

It's the cost of doing business. Right now, spam costs nearly nothing and that's why it's overrun with halfwits and losers.

Re:I'm in Michigan

[UbuntuDupe]

One trick I know is that you can avoid spamming people.

Re:I'm in Michigan

[Secrity]

You don't have to check the email address if you have the permission of the holder of the email addess, you will have permission of the holder of the email address, won't you? If you don't have permission, then you will be a spammer -- and are fair game.

Re:I'm in Michigan

[Anonymous Coward]

(original AC again...) Ok, do you think this means it should be illegal for minors to buy a newspaper? Every Sunday paper I get has ads for alcohol, tobacco, gambling and firearms. And some people might call the Velvet Fingers ads obscene. I'm not sure I like the idea of electronic communications being treated special. If my business name is "CheapGuns.com", someone signs up for the monthly specials listserv I need to run that list against the State list every month to try and stay legal?

Hmmm, I think it is also illegal for a minor to purchase an automobile -- so car dealers also need to be very careful who they communicate with?

Re:I'm in Michigan

[Punt3r]

If my business name is "CheapGuns.com", someone signs up for the monthly specials listserv I need to run that list against the State list every month to try and stay legal?

Oh, don't be silly.

You have to run your list against EVERY state that has such a list, every month.

Good luck!

Re:I'm in Michigan

[Punt3r]

Which part of the law says that?

"Senders of adult e-mails must scrub their lists at least every 30 days in order to comply with the law." https://www.protectmichild.com/senders/

If you send ANYTHING that has to do with WHATEVER the state has put on it's prude-list, you need to scrub. Doesn't matter if you think you have permission or not.

Re:I'm in Michigan

[ArtStone]

Would this law apply to military recruiters?

The one bit I don't get

[Quiet_Desperation]

Why would the porn or DM industries oppose a do-not-email list? Why do they have such a boner to keep sending spam to people who are willing to sign up to a list that says they are NOT interested?

Re:The one bit I don't get

[alexgieg]

I guess this is due to the fact that spambots running on hijacked computers send e-mails to randomly generated addresses. So, if for some reason the spammers don't have enough control over their zombies to block them in a timely manner from sending e-mails to a given list of addresses, they'll end up having to pay fines due to they not being compliant with the law if such a randomly generated address happened to be a no-spam signed one. Easiest solution for them would be no law at all.

Re:The one bit I don't get

[MrNougat]

Why would the porn or DM industries oppose a do-not-email list? Why do they have such a boner to keep sending spam to people who are willing to sign up to a list that says they are NOT interested?

Because the companies outsource their mass-mailing operations to third parties. Those third parties are the ones who would have to filter their mailing lists against myriad "do not email" lists from as many geopolitical groups. Those third parties are often small outfits that run botnets to deliver their spam.

Do you really think that someone who runs a spam botnet is going to take extra time out to filter their mailing list that way? The more time spent doing the job, the less money per hour spent doing it. Bottom line - it's cheaper not to filter a mailing list.

The only way to turn that around is to make it cheaper to filter a mailing list, possibly through large court settlements or jail time.

Re:The one bit I don't get

[michaelwexler]

While the porn industry certainly uses spam, there are (hard to believe) some companies which run fully confirmed opt-in mailings that outsource because (hard to believe) email done right is not in most company's capabilities.

These 3rd parties are concerned about the abusive use of the do-not-email list, including the following:
1) The only company providing those services (http://www.unspam.com/) is the one lobbying for the laws. We don't seem to appeciate things like Cheney pushing Halliburton; should we accept the same for the do-not-email? Their solution is the very one the FTC suggested was a disaster in the report linked below; should we assume that the states did a deeper investigation of the implementation issues than the multi-year FTC one?
2) The list doesn't solve the very problem it is supposed to handle. That is, it provides an easy way to detect who are kids on the list, and then hammer-mail them with kid-oriented spam. Sure, less porn, but more spam. That seems like a problem to me.
3) Others have mentioned the forgery issues: If you get joejobbed, the current law in MI (and proposed in Utah) doesn't care. You are liable. Too bad.
4) Its a state level law, meaning that its close to impossible to use against international mailers.
5) Legit companies _agree with you_ that spam is bad. However, like many slashdotters, they think dumb laws (like DMCA) i.e. poor implementations, are bad and should be removed. The Mich and Utah laws and approaches are bad ways to solve important problems.

Previous posters are correct about spamgangs and other issues there... but not all direct marketers are spammers. If you are stupid enough to believe that all marketing is bad, etc. etc., feel free to put your name on the current do-not-email http://www.ftc.gov/reports/dneregistry/report.pdf is the link to the FTC's report, which includes many of these ideas expanded.

Why?

[fullphaser]

Man those kids are lucky, I would just love to have a free porn image in my inbox every day... but alas I get medical advertisements... silly kids, fwd thine porn spam to me.

On a more serious note, why only target porn spam, why not just prosecute spammers period?

Michigan AG's name...

[SwedeGeek]

Is it just me or is there some irony in the Michigan AG's name being Mike Cox. Seems like we should also be protecting our children from inapproriate material by leaving his name out of the news reports!

Re:Michigan AG's name...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey -- it's even better than you think. The alternative in that election was named "Peters." There were some pretty amusing headlines the next day (e.g., "Cox inches out Peters"), like this one.

Re:Michigan AG's name...

[The_REAL_DZA]

Didn't he used to work for a certain rental-car company? He was let go after they interviewed him on the local news one night and put his name and his company's name on the screen together...

One question

[MikeRT]

If you think that kids should be able to have unregulated access to porn and violent video games, can I assume that you also support their being able to get a concealed carry permit and be able to buy a handgun since clearly they're mature enough to handle the first two things? If you don't think they're mature enough for the latter, then it's obvious they aren't not mature enough for the former.

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that kids should be able to have unregulated access to porn and violent video games, can I assume that you also support their being able to get a concealed carry permit and be able to buy a handgun since clearly they're mature enough to handle the first two things? If you don't think they're mature enough for the latter, then it's obvious they aren't not mature enough for the former.

This is kind of a bogus argument. If kids that don't understand the power of guns, get guns, they can kill me or themselves. If kids get access to porn...it really doesn't have an effect on me at all. I agree that it's not a great thing to expose kids to this, however, I'm not sure that the legal system is the place to duke it out, particularly when a law is vague, broad and doesn't address the real problem of pornographic spam being sent from overseas.

Re:One question

[Chandon Seldon]

If you think that people should have access to forks and knives, can I assume that you also support their having access to personal nuclear weapons? If you don't think that they're responsible enough for nukes, then they obviously aren't responsible enough for silverware.

Re:One question

[drooling-dog]

You're being sarcastic, right?

But while we're on the subject, I wonder if anyone has followed up on all of those children who were exposed to multiple milliseconds of Janet Jackson's nipple a couple of years back on the Superbowel halftime show. Can they possibly be leading normal lives by now, or is the damage permanent? Could be a good grant application, anyway.

"I do not understand networks or the internet."

[The_REAL_DZA]

...Your statement almost screams, "I do not understand networks or the internet."...

In a word: tubes (I thought everyone knew that by now...)

...This is unreasonable and puts blame on providers because of the actions of their users.

Hey, any plumber worth his pay ought to be able to keep someone else's crap from flowing into one of his customers' tubes, and if he can't he deserves to be punished.

Of course they have teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

All fascist governments have teeth.

Why?

[y5]

Why is it that we're always trying to solve tech problems with social solutions, and social problems with tech solutions? The free market and technology created spam, and IMO they're doing a fine job of canning it too. Is government intervention really necessary?

A few slashdotters commented on how this article was a dupe, but now I'm starting to see why stories like the "untraining spam filters" are rising to the surface yet again. Ever notice how stories about unhealthy fast food/cigarettes pop up right before a lawsuit?

::adjusts tin foil hat:: It's just all too convenient for me...

Re:America's understanding of freedom.

[Secret Agent X23]

Gosh, here I am with mod points, and there's no "Clueless" mod to assign to this.

OH NO THE CHILDREN!

[danpsmith]

What the hell are children even doing with their own email address? Seems to me they could get by fine 10 years ago without one, now we have to play nanny on the Internet for children who have no real business with it anyway. How about this? Tell the little kids to get outside and develop real social skills instead of emailing friends back and forth. I'm sick of people standing behind children to justify things. I can see having a do-not-email list, but the Internet is bigger than Michigan, so good luck trying to get a company based in some tiny country to conform to your laws. Nobody likes spam, but I'm so sick of the "my kid might see some porn" issue. Watch your kid, protect your computer from them and tell them to get outside. Children have no real business on the Internet unsupervised anyway.

Re:OH NO THE CHILDREN!

[slackmaster2000]

Refer back to this post after your first child turns 10.

Re:OH NO THE CHILDREN!

[Jearil]

What the hell are children even doing reading and writing? Seems to me they could get by fine 1000 years ago without it, now we have to play nanny with the Post Office for children who have no real business with it anyway. How about this? Tell the little kids to get outside and develop real social skills instead of writing to friends. I'm sick of people standing behind children to justify things. I can see having a do-not-mail list, but the Postal System is bigger than Michigan, so good luck trying to get a company based in some tiny country to conform to your laws. Nobody likes spam, but I'm so sick of the "my kid might read something I disagree with" issue. Watch your kid, protect your letters from them and tell them to get outside. Children have no real business with writing unsupervised anyway.

Fixed that for you.

But seriously, people in the past did not want children to learn more advanced concepts like reading and writing such thing was a waste of time.. it didn't bring in crops or tend the sheep. We can see how good of an idea that was.

The Internet is a tool of the modern world. People are going to be exposed to it in the modern times be it at childhood or in their adult life. Wouldn't it be better for them to learn how to properly use it now rather than "restrict" them (which always works by the way), and cripple their development in our world later on in life?

Sure they should go outside and play, be with friends and all that. But being able to contact all your friends via email will help them develope writing skills, and possibly other communication skills in large social networks that are prominate today.

Why the hell would I want to e-mail the Registry?

[varmint jerky]

It's huge!

Good for the porn-people

[bky1701]

I am annoyed by how many people here that say they so much oppose censorship find this law to be a good thing. It's future abuses are clear, and the problems this may cause to websites (what if someone else joins a porn site with your email? Happens a lot more then you would think). I don't see anything about this other then blind internet censorship, ala China. So congratulations porn people on fighting it! Sadly you stand no chance against the thinkofthechildren masses in the end.

The problem

[The Cisco Kid]

.. with the YOU-CAN-SPAM act is it concerns itself too much with the content of the message.

That they are only going after porn spammers proves this. Spam is spam, wether it is hawking naked co-eds screwing horses, trying to sell you fake rolex watches, or even trying to get you to 'accept $diety as your personal savior', if *YOU* didnt expect it, and didnt want it, its spam.

It's an election year!

[gettingbraver]

The governor and her administration are milking this one for all it's worth!

Seriously problematic bill

[eliot1785]

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the wording of the bill is restricted to unsolicited mail. It seems to address all mail, solicited or not. That's the #1 problem with this bill. The #2 problem with the bill is that people have to pay to ensure (required) compliance, which amounts to an email tax. The #3 problem is that this only deals with a specific subset of mail considered to be most objectionable - an anti-spam bill need to address all spam, because it's not like Rolex spam is any less bad for one's inbox.

Take away those problems and you will have a good bill. The problem is that this bill seems to be less targeted towards spam as towards protecting children from bad content. So it's not even a true anti-spam bill.

I only have one domain

[way2trivial]

and every website I register at get's it address to the left of the @

buycom@mydomain.info
amazoncom@mydomain.info
nytimescom@mydomain.info

scott e vest gave me over to mortgage financier spammers
(only one to date) I wrote them, never saw a reply.
since blocked the address, and decided to stop shopping with them.
if I do again, I'll make it scottevestcom2@mydomain.info