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Communications The Internet United States Censorship Your Rights Online

Send Email to Utah, Go to Jail 430

Posted by timothy from the set-engines-to-ludicrous dept.
Talaria writes "The Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy is reporting that two new laws in Utah and Michigan are going into effect next week, creating 'do not email' registries for children's email addresses. According to ISIPP, 'Email marketers who send unpermitted messages to email addresses or domains on the child protection registries in Michigan and Utah face stiff penalties including prison and fines.'" (Note that ISIPP has a vested interest in publicizing these laws, since they offer a service intended to establish that senders are in fact within the law.)
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Send Email to Utah, Go to Jail More

Send Email to Utah, Go to Jail

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  • Enforcement Across the Pacific (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:27PM (#12916373) Homepage
    If the spammer is living in China (i.e., mainland China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong) and if this spammer sends e-mail notes to the e-mail address of an American children, how do the authorities plan to enforce this law. There is no extradition treaty between China and the USA.

  • How do *I* get on the list? (Score:4, Funny)

    by drsmack1 ( 698392 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:28PM (#12916378)
    Sounds like a good way to avoid being SPAMMED...

  • I dont live in utah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imstanny ( 722685 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:28PM (#12916382)
    their laws no longer apply to me. ... with time, i won't have to dodge bullets either. But seriously, what their email gets automatically subscribed, as most emails do. Or if you're in a different country or state? I don't know the law in that respect, but it brings up the point of how can Utah law have jurisdiction on the internet.
    • I don't know the law in that respect, but it brings up the point of how can Utah law have jurisdiction on the internet.

      I don't understand it either. It sounds very unconstitutional to me. They have a right to regulate the behavior of businesses to a degree within their own state, they could pass a law saying no Utah or no Michigan company will solicit these materials via email to minors on a list, but I do not understanding how they can apply their law to companies based in other states, much less other c

    • Re:I dont live in utah (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:38PM (#12916799)
      What I want to know is what is so criminal about marketing to children over the internet? We market to them in magazines, on television, in school, on the radio - even in their text books. They can't go a minute without being marketed to in some way. So why should spam be any different?

      And what's next? Arresting some old man in line at the grocery store for making funny faces at the lady's kid in the shopping car - trying to make the kid laugh or something?

      Why don't we just lock children away until they're adults. That way we won't have to worry about them and they will grow up to be perfect, healthy, safe and sane and we won't have to baby-proof everything.

  • Am I the only one.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by End11 ( 740392 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:29PM (#12916387)
    .. that doesn't beleive that heavy-handed government intervention is the solution to every problem? Especially when the solution involves censoring (for whatever reason) email communications?
    • No, you're not the only one. In fact, I agree with both of your points. However, I don't see how enforcement of a do-not-email list is censorship any more than enforcement of a "No Trespassing" sign.
    • Think about spam as being equivalent to pollution -- it's that an enterprise is able to shift its market burden to others. In the case of a polluting buisness, the government has to pay for clean up; in the case of a spammer, ISPs have to pay for more bandwidth, larger storage on their servers, and it wastes people's time; of course, the ISPs pass these expenses onto their customers, and the government pass it onto taxpayers. Both of these are fundementally unfair to the customers/taxpayers, and that's why

  • Dear Santa, Re: Your Message (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:29PM (#12916394) Homepage Journal
    After a while, when those on the "nospam" list turn into unprotected adults, those addresses become a spammer's dream of verified recipients. Especially to those pitching to the "young adult" market segment, which is probably the most popular for spammers after "midlife crisis men". I guess I know what to give my Utah cousins for their 18th birthdays: A new address.

  • oy.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cryptoz ( 878581 ) <jns@jacobsheehy.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:30PM (#12916398) Homepage Journal
    This sounds freakishly like the old Do Not Call list. As in, it's a really stupid idea. Why don't we create a list of all the e-mails of people who won't want to be e-mailed? 'Cause, you know, that's smart...no one will ever think of stealing the list and e-mailing all of the people...which would be a great irony, now that I think about it.

    I remember how easy it was to get the DNC list from donotcall.gov for five different area codes, for free (if you lied a couple times about your tax information or something like that).

    What's going to be in place for this to be stopped in this case?

    • Re:oy.... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tourney3p0 ( 772619 )
      I used to get about 5 telemarketer calls a day. I put myself on the Do Not Call list and now I get none. I did get one a few months ago. I don't know if they simply didn't obey the do not call list, or if they got access to the list. I complained and was assured they would be dealt with. Yeah, the Do Not Call list was a really stupid idea.

    • Re:oy.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:52PM (#12916575)
      This sounds freakishly like the old Do Not Call list. As in, it's a really stupid idea.

      What are you talking about? The national Do Not Call list works. The whole point is that it's publicly available. What's the problem with that? It's now easy to prosecute violators.

    • I remember how easy it was to get the DNC list from donotcall.gov for five different area codes, for free (if you lied a couple times about your tax information or something like that).

      I got a copy of all the area codes for free without lying at all. I am a seller of products who calls only consumers with whom I have an established business relationship or from whom I have obtained the express written agreement to call. So I'm an "exempt organization", and therefore I can access the entire do-not-call

    • Re:oy.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rakishi ( 759894 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @09:50PM (#12917341)
      You're a moron, can't find a nicer way to say it. As someone else said the Do Not Call List works, and comparing it to an email list only helps prove that you have no idea what you're talking about. E-mail is mostly untraceable, free and can come from anywhere. Phones are traceable (mostly), cost money and in reality can't come from anywhere due to their cost (phone spamming from China would be amusing). There are also difference of volume and time. Can people get around these things? Yes. Is it through legal means? Probably not. Do they bother? It seems not.

    • Re:oy.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by caudron ( 466327 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @08:06AM (#12919172) Homepage
      This sounds freakishly like the old Do Not Call list. As in, it's a really stupid idea.

      While I agree with your point in principle (that this list will not be effective), you've used a pretty bad example. I'm on the DNC list, as are many people I know. Once that list kicked in, we all had a period of about a month or so where the calls were tapering off and after that, dead silence. That thing works like a champ! I still got calls, but only from groups that are legally exempt from the list, which is a WAY smaller group than before. I went from 2 to 4 solicitor calls a day to about 1 every two weeks, if that. The others that I know have had similar experiences.

  • sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rbochan ( 827946 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:30PM (#12916404) Homepage
    Yet another WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!11!!oneone!!OMGWTFBBQ!!!!! pseudo-law...

    George Carlin was right about the Pussification of America(TM).

    • Re:sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Geoffreyerffoeg ( 729040 )
      As a "child" (well, under 18), I think I speak for all of us when I say please stop thinking about us. One easy way to take this burden off your shoulders is to give us the vote (let those who pass high-school civics or government be able to vote). Because we can think for ourselves, thank you very much.

  • Token Law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:31PM (#12916415) Homepage
    As usual, the headline is misleading. There is little chance that Utah will attempt to extradite spammers from China / Russia / South America, and so on. While a few (yes, and really VERY FEW) local boys have been hooked by The Feds, most are too slick (slimy?) to fall for leaving readable tracks for law enforcement to follow. In summary, this law is token and nothing more.

    • Re:Token Law (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chadjg ( 615827 )
      If I read the summary on the linked site correctly, the law allows for civil suits. Surely there are enough zealots out there that would love to heckle the email marketers. If by marketers Utah means the people that are pushing the products, gathering information about customers and tailoring the pitches, then it may be possible to hunt them down. A friendly postal inspector or a subpoena to FedEx and some pressure should cough up the address of the PenisPill vendor. It might just be a front, but that's a

  • Freedom (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:31PM (#12916417)
    For only $250 a month, you can stay out of prison.

    Brought to you by ISIPP.

  • More feel-good legislation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:31PM (#12916419)
    Utah isn't going to be getting extradition for arrests of spammers in other states. Flat out not going to get it. The other jurisdictions don't even care to enforce their own junk fax laws, never mind anti-spam laws. Now Utah has an idea that they'll get other states to go along?

    No, not really. But the public will think they are doing something and go back to watching Survivor or whatever until their next wave of "government must do X about Y" feelings comes over them.
    • >> No, not really. But the public will think they are doing something and go back to watching Survivor or whatever until their next wave of "government must do X about Y" feelings comes over them.

      You got it. Passing legislation beats actually having to pay attention to what your kids are doing. (pretend for a moment the legislation will actually work...)

  • What is Utah really like? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:31PM (#12916420)
    I have to ask what Utah is really like. I'm from Britain, so I've never been there. But all I hear about is that they're a very backwards state, in basically every way possible. I've even heard some people go so far as to say that Utah is resonsible for a lot of the decay in the United States today. Are those claims true, or are they just overgeneralizations based on the actions of a select few individuals?

    • Re:What is Utah really like? (Score:5, Funny)

      by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:39PM (#12916470)
      I've even heard some people go so far as to say that Utah is resonsible for a lot of the decay in the United States today.

      I think that's Washington D.C. you're referring to.
    • Let me answer your question with a question: If a man and a woman from Utah, marries in Las Vegas and divorces in Los Angeles - are they still brother and sister?
    • Are those claims true, or are they just overgeneralizations based on the actions of a select few individuals?

      Pretty much anything bad you hear about anything is an overgeneralization based on the actions of a select few individuals. Ignorance too. For example I picture you to be a skinny pale dude with bad teeth eating boiled meat and drinking a warm Guiness, but that's only cause that's what TV taught me.

      Utah is just another state, more conserative than the average because of the high Mormon population.

    • Re:What is Utah really like? (Score:5, Funny)

      by drsmack1 ( 698392 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:49PM (#12916553)
      Utah is a prosperous state with a highly educated and industrious populous. Anything bad that you are hearing is generated by Left-Wingers who are threatened by the Right-wing slant of the state.

      Basically they have all the good and bad of every state in the union; in varying degrees. They have a lot of rural areas which drag then down a bit in the statistics.

      http://www.adherents.com/largecom/lds_dem.html [adherents.com]

      http://www.netstate.com/states/alma/ut_alma.htm [netstate.com]

      • Re:What is Utah really like? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Not true. Even conservatives like me dislike Utah. See, I am a real conservative. I don't believe that I should be telling people what they can do in their own home. I don't believe in making the State enforce my own sex rules. I don't believe in sicing dogs on black people. I don't believe in murdering gay people.

        I am a true conservative and freaks like those from Utah give people like me a bad name.
    • You're thinking of the American South, the old confederacy. Utah is out in the west, and not that many people even live there. The Mormons, moved out there after the founding of their religion, and so it's a hotbed of mormonism. But a lot of those people are wealthy, and i was under the impression that its well kept and nice, if you don't mind a Mormon infestation. Mormons are more uptight then a lot of christians, but arn't as annoying as, for example, evangelicals or southern baptists, who are concentra

      • Re:Um, no (Score:5, Interesting)

        by The boojum ( 70419 ) on Monday June 27, 2005 @01:48AM (#12918269)
        I'm a "gentile" who moved here to Salt Lake City at the beginning of the year to go back to grad school and this is pretty much how it's looked to me so far. About the only thing I have to add is that I've been told that many people aren't quite as wealthy as they seem at first glance here. The LDS tendency to mary young often leads to people overextending their credit trying to purchase a house too early.

        And yeah, I have yet to really meet annoying pushy LDS folks like I have evangelicals. Polite protest of disinterest have worked just fine.

        There also turn out to be some surprising advantages to the oddities in legislation here. For example, the recent SCOTUS Eminent Domain ruling has no effect here as the state government recently passed legislation banning eminent domain for redevelopment purposes [sltrib.com] (except, in a twisted joke, for the redevelopers own property.)

        I should mention, however, that my views are somewhat coloured by a fairly centrists view of American politics and religion, so the politics and religion here don't really bother me as much as they might some. (Honestly, for the moment I find them a somewhat refreshing change from my old heavily blue state.)

    • Well, they can't be too bright... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      they keep electing Orrin Hatch. [senate.gov] That alone speaks volumes. Among other things, he's the proud author of the DMCA, [everything2.com] the INDUCE act, [wired.com] the PIRATE act [corante.com] (Porno Is Really Awesome To Endorse, apparently), he advocated the destruction of PCs belonging to software pirates with some vaporware virus, [oreillynet.com] and then was caught red handed using pirated software. [wired.com] He claimed that was a mistake made by his staff. When he was caught with stolen Democratic party memos, [theleftcoaster.com] he claimed that (you guessed it) it was a mistake made by his

    • Just like any other place... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChePibe ( 882378 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @09:10PM (#12917173)
      If you're not a big fan of trees and moisture in general, you may like it.

      Yes, I'm a Mormon, but I'm originally from the south (North Florida... basically an extension of Georgia with an Alabama twang) and I'd never been to Utah at all until I was 19, and not for any appreciable amount of time until I was 21 and was going to college. I have no blood relatives from Utah.

      Here's what I can't stand about Utah - climate. Hate it. I'm from Florida and I like my oxygen soaking and mosquito infested thank you very much. I'm tired of going through a tube of Chapstick every four days and I hate having to put lotion on my hands every day or watch them crack and bleed. My wife wants to stay in Salt Lake for my career... and her skin breaks out around humidity... don't know how we're going to arrange this one.

      Some portions of culture - as noted, yes, I'm a Mormon, but I'd never been to Utah before I grew up. Some portions of the population are amazingly zealous (a small town or two in Utah actually has declared itself a "UN free zone", whatever that may mean), but so long as you stay out of the geographical fringes and don't go attacking people for whatever reason, you're pretty much OK. There's a lot more anti-Mormon activity here than there was in the South (and that's saying something), which I'm not a big fan of. I've never stood outside of someone else's building to pamphlet it, blare at those who enter it with megaphones, or break up other people's wedding parties, but there's a lot of folks there that seem to like to do it to the Mormons.

      As far as the state being the "reddest" in the nation, that's true, but take a look at the political affiliation of the mayor of Utah's biggest city - yup, Salt Lake's mayor is a Democrat.

      Take a look at the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid. He's a Mormon, too. It would appear the democrats don't have that much of a problem with Mormons after all.

      Also, should it really surprise people that a bunch of conservative minded people should vote for a (here's a shocker) conservative party? Or that people should vote for others in their peer groups? Sure, lots of Mormons get elected but guess what - the majority of the people in Utah are MORMONS. You could even look at it as a matter of probability - if you were to randomly select something from a bag and 75% of the objects in the bag were one color, which would you be most likely to select? Apply the dynamics of winner-take-all voting on there and you're bound to get more Mormons in government. You may also note that blacks are very often elected by majority black areas and Jews in majority Jewish areas. Is it really that surprising that a place with a population up to 90% Mormon in some areas would vote for a Mormon and would allow their religious beliefs to maybe come into their voting?

      As far as Utah bringing down American society as we know it, I hardly think Utah's four or five electoral votes could have that effect. And the people you're largely thinking of are evangelicals - and many of those are out there burning Books of Mormon and causing the Mormons a lot of trouble.

      Paranoid political theories aside, Mormons don't (or most certainly don't) discuss politics from the pulpit. No non-profit group can without risking its non-profit status. Ironically, this has been used against a lot of Anti-Mormon groups that attack Mormon candidates based on religion.

      I'm actually a BYU student in Provo, the most Republican city in the most Republican state in the Union. BYU does have a large Democrats club that actually WON last year's debate against the Republican club (whooped 'em big time), and the debate was scored by a firm, straight party-line Republican professor (I know because I've talked with him about these issues privately from time to time).

      However, it shouldn't be assumed that all of the professors share his views. Of the professors I know who have expressed political views, Democrats are at least even with Republicans, and there's even
    • If you like snow skiing, hiking, mountain biking, camping, fishing, rock climbing, or any number of other outdoor activities, Utah is a great place to live. Not only does it have real seasons (snow in the winter, sun in the summer) but there is a real diversity of terrain. You can go from desert to glaciers pretty quickly in some places.

      If you really, really, really hate Mormons (and I'd love to know why if you do, please say "intolerance on their part" so I can laugh at your intolerance), and you like to complain about obnoxious liquor laws, then it might not be the right place for you. The liquor lawas seem to be more of a problem for the tourists than for the locals, since the real problem is just understanding them. Anybody that wants to drink in Utah drinks whatever they want to.

      Even if you have no desire to live there, it is really worth a visit while on holiday. There are a large number of national parks and some really spectacular scenery.

      • If you like snow skiing, hiking, mountain biking, camping, fishing, rock climbing, or any number of other outdoor activities, Utah is a great place to live.

        You forgot hunting. Great hunting here too. Why just about every kid over 12 has a rifle.

        And allayou outta-staters thinkin' 'bout comin' here just might want ta think 'bout that. We got enuf people here and don' need no more.

        Oh, and all the rest of that stuff he mentioned is overrated. And the bit about liquor is wrong, too -- if ya come h

    • Re:What is Utah really like? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) * on Sunday June 26, 2005 @11:00PM (#12917619)
      Disclaimer: I'm 2 time zones away from Utah and the closest I've been to it is 6 miles over it.

      At any rate, I wouldn't say Utah is "dragging down the nation" all that much, if at all. You can't really talk about Utah without talking about Mormons, but my experience is that, while they may be quirky and even a little annoying at times, they're nowhere near as vitriolic as Evangelicals in general and Baptists in particular.

      Part of it has to do with history, I think: other than sending out missionaries on bicycles, Mormons have learned the hard way to keep to themselves. Baptists may be up in arms about a government conspiracy out to get them when they can't put the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, but I haven't seen the US Army shoot at them yet. They also haven't been forced to alter their religious teachings in order to be considered for statehood.

      (I'm partly sympathetic, but I'm mostly just ashamed of my government w/r/t Mormons.)

      Even on television they seem far more sedate in pushing their religion than your average group of Baptists. They don't start out with threats of damnation, they just want to start by mailing you a book.

      Another poster mentioned Senator Hatch, but let's face it: it takes 51 senators to get a bad bill through, and Hatch is only one man. You can't blame all those bad votes on Utah or Mormons. However, Baptists have the entire Bible Belt to play with (with the help of some sympathetic Catholics in Louisiana).

      At any rate, if you're looking for someone to blame, I'd look elsewhere for now. Another poster mentioned Washington, D. C.

  • I do not see how this could possibly work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Approaching.sanity ( 889047 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:34PM (#12916435) Homepage
    Will this apply to e-mail addresses Created in Utah? Stored? If I am a resident of that state, create an e-mail address for that list and move to a different state can I use their law against someone else?

    It will be impossible to enforce.
  • (5) The sending of a message described in subsection (1) is prohibited
    only if it is otherwise a crime for the minor to purchase, view,
    possess, participate in, or otherwise receive the product or service.

    Does that mean that it disallows sending of adult e-mail only, while allowing everything else, or am I misunderstanding?
  • Wow. Just like that, all of my spam problems are now solved. I'll be you all wish you lived in Utah too!

    </sarcasm>
  • 15 cents per thousand emails, assuming 50 states do it with the charge given in the Michigan law, sounds rather expensive for just checking database records. Cheap enough way to get contact points of children, though.

  • Doesn't COPPA cover this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:46PM (#12916530)
    Does not the COPPA cover the dealings of youth on the Internet? Why did they introduce redundancy and possible conflicting legislaton like this?

  • Utah, hmm? (Score:3, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:49PM (#12916555)
    I wonder if we could get 1) the Utah kid crowd interested in some Linux distros and organize them on a scale sufficient to attract the attention of SCO, which would want to spa^H^H^H email them about their 699$ registration fee...

    2) ???
    3) Jailarity!

  • Like this has a chance of working... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PocketPick ( 798123 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @06:54PM (#12916580)
    The law has good intentions, but the lawmakers should of realized two things:

    1.) That the technology and authentication needed to enforce these new regulations simply aren't present.
    2.) The legal definition of spam still lies in limbo, even with the CAN-SPAM act.

    This along with sample cases can easily show the ineffectiveness of this law. Take for instance this case: I often find that due to lax IT standards and efforts at my university, my e-mail is sometimes used to transfer spam or malicious viruses through no fault of my own. Am I to blame if an 'illegal' email reaches one of these addresses in the registry? I would like to think not, but the law is vague enough to permit such reprecusions. Granted, the law is likely intended to target larger marketing firms and not the individual user, but the fact that the possibility exists is the point.

  • hello frend (Score:5, Funny)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:00PM (#12916600) Homepage Journal
    Hello young UtaH child

    My name is Prince omar en caver ensanado and i am in desperate need of help. My heard of unicorns are kiled by very bad men who have taken over my country of narnia. We need helps to buy food and supplies to keep alive the unicorns.

    I know that you are a good child, and will be willing to help. I am also able to pay great money for the help. If you can email your momy or dadys bank account and social secutrity number, I put lots of money in the account. They be very happy and thank you for long time for making them so much money. In return we just need to spend some of it on food and some fun army stuff.

    If you me help reply please. The poor little unicorns are dying. To deposit the money in you parents account and make them very happy, I need you to buy some stuff and leave in wardrobe at place I tell you later. you can buy with credit cards. We give you gillions of dollars as soon as we get the stuff.

    Please help! You want to make parent happy and be good child, yes. you don't want to be bad child? Pleas reply and I tell you what you must buy. All this ok, i promise, cross my hert!

  • Child predators (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Carrion ( 2315 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:03PM (#12916624)
    With all the hissy fit that's been going on about the possibilities for rapists to find children to abuse online, is it really a good idea to make it public information how to get a hold of children directly?

  • Reverse Effect (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ntsucks ( 22132 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:06PM (#12916631)
    This law will only have the opposite effect. The email senders who will obey these laws are responsible corporate citizens, which are not likely those at whom the law was intended. The more nafarious senders of spam (drugs, porn, etc) will not make an effort to follow the law.

    The law will likely cut down on the mild content spam and only increase the awful content spam to children. If the "do not spam" list is made available to anyone, how long until lawless spammers add those names to their target lists?
    Answer: not very long.

    This law will likely serve to filter out the mild content spam and only increase the amount of nasty spam.

    The law is a nice idea, but won't do a bit of good in the real world.

    • I'll second that. The latest trend of spamming (if you don't count buying relays from spam-friendly ISPs in foreign countries that ignore their abuse e-mail addresses) involved liberally spreading virii that would turn the systems of unsuspecting users into open e-mail relays, then sending a great deal of spam through those relays on the dime of said users. I've even read that in some cases the IP addresses of compromised machines are sold to the people to exploit them, creating an interesting sort of B2B
  • since i'm not a kid anymore, it is ok to send me p0rn, p1lz, |\/|ortgages, requests for africa and other garbage.

    it's just not fair.
  • I sell toys online (kids toys, not adult toys you pervs). I get about 5-10% bogus orders. Mostly from kids placing dubious orders without their parents knowledge. Of course, the kids (usually) cannot complete the order by making payment. But the site that takes the orders takes them anyway because some payment types are paper and not electronic. So what happens now if I get one from Utah (miscreant child or malicious adult) and I reply to the order with an invoice and amount due ?

    Am I liable (because I got

  • Bogus flux critical! (Score:3, Informative)

    by RM6f9 ( 825298 ) <rwmurker@yahoo.com> on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:25PM (#12916720) Homepage Journal
    FTFA:
    In order to avoid running afoul of these new laws, email marketers have two choices:

    1. They can ensure that they never send any email containing unpermitted materials, links to unpermitted materials, or even links to sites which have information about the unpermitted materials; or

    2. They can match their mailing lists against the email registries maintained by Michigan and Utah, on a monthly basis. There is a fee associated with this list matching. Email lists are provided to the state in an encrypted fashion, and the email address registry is also encrypted.

    Now, I would not mind filtering any commercial email list I might maintain against their "do not email" list: What I definitely DO mind is being CHARGED for the privilege!! It makes zero sense to reward the businesses who use Unsolicited Commercial Email within all apllicable laws and regulations with FEES charged in order to ensure that they *continue* to operate within the regs. The sad part is, even if your list is double opt-in, if one of the member addresses on that list is also on Utah's or Michigan's "Do not" list, *you*, as the provider of email, are the one punished. The double-opted in subscriber in question, in all likelihood an enforcement official involved in entrapment, faces no penalty whatsoever.

    I try, I really do try, to keep my language within bounds of decency, but sometimes one just simply must say !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • You're new to /. arent you? I dont think you'll get much sympathy here.

      How about you:
      1) Dont send out unpermitted materials; or
      2) Dont send out anything. We don't want your spam anyway.

  • Pedophiles everywhere rejoice, plan trips to Utah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tassach ( 137772 ) on Sunday June 26, 2005 @07:46PM (#12916825)
    A list of email addresses known to be read by real children? That sounds like a pedophile's wet dream.

    This list is custom-made for abuse, especially when you consider that many people use the same nickname in multiple places -- email, instant messanger, blogs, etc.

  • I hope they know how to scan proper headers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Monday June 27, 2005 @09:45AM (#12919806)

    This "law" is really going to suck for Joe Job [wikipedia.org] emails (you know, the ones where someone takes YOUR email address and uses it in their From: line to spam millions, so the bounces and rejection messages come back to YOUR mailbox).

    If they're not properly parsing headers to find the REAL sender of the email (i.e. in the "From " line, not the "From:" line), they're going to likely investigate and piss off a LOT of innocent people who have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the originating spam messages.

    Time to start using those 16,384-byte gpg and crypto keys on all of my systems again. Sigh.

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