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Michigan Enforces Do-Not-Email Registry Law

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the think-of-the-children dept.

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?"

13 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. The Love of Money by eldavojohn · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:The Love of Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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 :).

    2. Re:The Love of Money by giorgiofr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Global warming is a cube.
    3. Re:The Love of Money by thebdj · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.
      --
      "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
    4. Re:The Love of Money by Silver+Sloth · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.
      --
      init 11 - for when you need that edge.
    5. Re:The Love of Money by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    6. Re:The Love of Money by castoridae · · Score: 3, Informative

      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." :-)

    7. Re:The Love of Money by kbielefe · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.

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  2. How does it work? by telchine · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

  3. Non-miner? :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Trading cards by krell · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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.

    --
    Where were you when the voynix came?
  5. Michigan AG's name... by SwedeGeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  6. Re:I'm in Michigan by laffer1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone