"Ronald Helm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Hopefully more states will follow this route. I tlooks like I could get
rich quickly just reporting the Spam that arrives in my AOL account daily.
Ron
Locke signs `spam' bill; it's first such law in nation
by Peter Lewis
Seattle Times staff reporter
Gov. Gary Locke yesterday signed into law a bill aimed at curbing
unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail, popularly known as spam.
As a result, Washington becomes the first state in the nation to have passed
legislation that will curb, if not eliminate, what many e-mail users
consider to be an annoyance or worse, according to California lawyer David
Kramer.
A recognized expert on Internet e-mail and legislative efforts to control
it, Kramer has testified before a state House committee in favor of a
tougher version of Washington's anti-spam bill. He also has collaborated on
bills proposed in Congress and in four other states.
The new law, which will take effect in 90 days, makes it a violation for
spammers to send e-mail messages that hide their point of origin, mask the
transmission path, or contain misleading information in the message's
subject line.
Spam, named after the often-derided Hormel meat product, usually contain
such false information in their "headers," or address fields, and promote
get-rich-quick schemes, miracle health cures or explicit pornographic
material.
The new law bans both sending e-mail with such deceptive header information
from computers located in Washington, and sending such e-mail to an
electronic mail address that the sender knows, or has reason to know, is
held by a Washington resident.
It puts the burden on the sender to find out whether the intended recipient
lives in Washington.
Individuals who receive such e-mail could collect up to $500 per violation;
Internet service providers, the companies that provide computer users access
to the Internet, could receive up to $1,000.
Assistant State Attorney General Paula Selis yesterday said the state will
aggressively enforce the new law, but she declined to elaborate, saying her
office generally doesn't like to disclose its enforcement strategies. She
called the new law "better than nothing."
With the support of the Washington Association of Internet Service Providers
(WAISP), Selis had drafted a more vigorous law that would have flatly banned
sending spam - unless there was an existing relationship between the sender
and the recipient, or the recipient had requested or consented to receive
it.
But powerful interests, including the Direct Marketing Association and
Microsoft, testified against that version of the bill.
Microsoft lobbyist Deborah Brunton said her company is "very concerned about
unsolicited junk e-mail, but we also are a company that used legitimate
e-mail practices to reach out to our customers." She said Microsoft was
concerned that the bill's original language was ambiguous, and might have
prohibited the company from developing new markets.
Meanwhile, in his column posted on the Microsoft Web site yesterday,
Chairman Bill Gates skewered spam, writing in part:
"Wasting somebody else's time strikes me as the height of rudeness. We have
only so many hours, and none to waste. That's what makes electronic junk
mail and e-mail hoaxes so maddening."
The new law also calls for creation of a three-member task force, consisting
of two members of the House Energy and Utilities Committee and a person
appointed by Locke, to identify technical, legal and cost issues related to
spam, and to evaluate whether existing laws are sufficient to cope with it.
It sets a Nov. 15 deadline for completion of the report.
Meantime, WAISP executive director Gary Gardner said local Internet
providers would review the new law when they gather April 17 at Bell Harbor
Conference Center on the Seattle waterfront.
Women have their faults. Men have only two.
Everything they say. Everything they do.
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