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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[AndersOSU]

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

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: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: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: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.

Re:OH NO THE CHILDREN!

[slackmaster2000]

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