Join Us…Your One Thread To All The California Recall News Threads! 
Want on our daily or major news ping lists? Freepmail DoctorZin
Posted on 09/24/2003 6:14:27 AM PDT by bedolido
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California will prohibit Internet advertisers from sending unsolicited e-mails under the toughest law of its kind in the nation, providing for fines up to $1 million.
Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation Tuesday that targets not only the firms that package and send spam to consumers, but also the companies whose products and services are being advertised.
The measure covers all unsolicited commercial e-mail sent or received in California and imposes fines of up to $1 million per incident.
"There are no loopholes, no way of getting around it," said the bill's author, state Sen. Kevin Murray, a Democrat.
Washington state passed an anti-spam measure in 1998, but it didn't go as far. The Washington law provides civil penalties of $500 per message for bulk or commercial e-mail with misleading information in the subject line, invalid reply addresses or disguised paths of transmission.
A San Francisco-based marketing firm, Ferris Research, estimated that unwanted e-mails cost U.S. companies nearly $9 billion in 2002 in lost productivity, consumption of communication bandwidth and drain of technical support.
"California is sending a clear message to Internet spammers: we will not allow you to litter the information superhighway with e-mail trash," said Davis in a statement.
This week, California also became the first state to protect the privacy of drivers whose vehicles come with "black boxes," devices that store data on how a car is being driven in the seconds before a collision.
The law, signed by Davis on Monday, stipulates that car owners must be told their cars carry the recorders, and says the information can only be downloaded with consent from the driver, a court order or for medical or safety research.
The devices can record speed, the use of brakes and seatbelts, and the deployment of air bags. Unlike airplane black boxes, the devices don't gather voice recordings.
It seems that this law goes after both the spammer and company that's advertising through the spammer. Even if the spammer could avoid being identified, it would seem that, in most cases, the company being advertised will be apparant.
Good. The feds need to do this too. Spam is tresspassing.
I suppose we should also have a federal law banning neighborhood school kids from selling candy door-to-door. I would rather trust a spam filter--or just delete e-mails from unknown senders--than to give government even more control.
Because it would be a tad more complex than simply going after the senders email address, as everyone knows they are bogus. What the law would do is empower the feds to subpoena web logs and go after the SOB's.
Selling candy door to door is a problem for which the Fed's could add nothing of value. However, nationwide crimes that cross state and national borders are precisely the type of thing that is ideal for the Feds to be doing.
Because they are entering my property and using my assets against my permission. It is very serious. Businesses and people like myself would like to you outlook such that whenever a message come in, your computer beeps and you can read it. This is useless when 99% of the messages are spam. In addition, of course, most of these messages are pornographic and they send them to kids.
No. You are choosing to receive it.
Is it trespassing to recieve junk mail in your mailbox?
Yes, which is why you have the right to demand not to receive it.
Is it trespassing to hear commercials on the radio?
No, not at all. The commericals are a part of the program that you are listening to.
You dont like having to either get a spam filter or wade through garbage in your email box.
That's right. The spam fileters don't work, and wading through takes time. I don't choose to receive it, but I get it anyway.
Further, you arent smart enough to realize that when you give your email addy to any website which requests it, its probably going on a list somewhere.
Sure I do, and I have never done that, yet I still get spam. All you have to do is wind up in someone elses outlook address book and you can wind up with it all over the place.
Since you dont want to be troubled with all this, you think there oughta be a law.
No, I think there oughta be a law because I think that people don't have the right to use my assets without my permission.
Your kind makes me sick.
Your kind who assumes untrue things about people makes me sick, as you clearly lack emotional stability.
You probably support anti-smoker legislation, seat-belt laws, and gun control dont you?
No, not in the slightest bit. Don't blame me because you make an ass of yourself assuming things that aren't true. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, you can demand not to receive any class C mail, which is the equivalent of Spam. If you bitch to the post offfice enough, they will stop delivering it.
As far as radio and tv broadcasts, they are also using your assets.
The sole purpose of those assets is to receive broadcasts. That's not the case with a computer or the internet. Plus, a broadcast does not impose any costs on the user, spam does.
Spam filters may not work 100% of the time. Tough. Its a new technology in case you had not noticed and its still being worked on.
They don't work very well at all, and they never will.
You make the mistake of assuming the whole world runs on Outlook.
No, I don't. Please stop with the false assumptions.
Many of us dont use it sir, and it sure as hell isnt the underlying backbone of email delivery.
The vast majority of corporations use it, sorry. But that is irrelevent. The point is that spam imposes a cost on email users.
Your address is out there because at some time you entered it on a site which resells it. Period.
Even if it is, so what? Let's say Sears gets your home address and repeatedly sends you stuff. Let's say you have made it clear that you don't want it, and they keep sending it. That is illegal. It should be for spam as well.
90% of the frustration with spam comes from users, like yourself, who have limited understanding of computers and the internet.
Once again, another totally false assumption. Why are you incapable of arguing a point without assuming false things about people. Somehow you even managed to assume that I'm for gun control.
Here's a news flash: Some of us almost never recieve spam. As much time as i spend online and as integrated as my life is to the web, i get about 2-3 pieces of spam a month - at most.
That's nice. Even if I did enter my email address somewhere five years ago, does that make it right that I should have to be innudated with pornography? Would you think it is legal if someguy came up to your house eveyr day and stuffed pornography under your door? Why is it legal to do the electronice equivalent?p>Granted, i have taken a lot of effort to ensure i dont get it. I never give out my primary home or office address to anyone unless I know them, or it is a business purpose.
I don't either.
The internet is not an asset you own sir.
I didn't say it was. But, my hard drive is, and I rent space from an ISP.
Its a largely unregulated medium. To a large degree, its completely uncontrolable.
Yeah, I know.
Good luck with your laws. All they will do is sound good. You'll still get your spam since you dont know how the system works.
I know exactly how it works, and I know that there are a relatively small number of people in the US who produce tens of millions of messgaes per day. It is easy to know who they are, and they can be stopped. After that, the filtering software will work a lot better because it will be easier to filter the stuff out when it is coming in from overseas.
Oh yeah - the ONLY result from this is your taxes will go up to pay for this ignorant legislation.
It's one result. Plus, the a-holes that we read about in wired who send out tens of millions of pornographic messages per day will be jailed.
I am also well trained in economics, and the one place where government must regulate is in areas where people are able to lay the costs of their economic activity off on others. An example of this is pollution. The government must regulate pollution because the costs of the polluter are borne not by the polluter, but by others. Thus, the economic incentive is to produce more pollution than one would if the costs were borne by the polluter.
The reason why the government must step in is because property law is not well enough defined for those bearing the costs of the pollution to effevtively defend their property rights (ie, the air in their yard, etc).
In the case of spam, the people doing the spamming are able to lay the costs of their activity on to others. Thus, more spam is produced than the economy would otherwise demand. Therefore, perhaps the right way is not to make spam illegal per se, but to better define property law as it relates to the internet so that ISP's and others can successfully take civil legal action against spammers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.