Originally published August 20 2005
New state laws could subject Michigan and Utah natives to more spam, columnist says
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Michigan and Utah have both imposed email taxes to deal with spammers, but Datamation columnist Brian Livingstone points out that the cleverly disguised "child protection laws" are likely to cause more junk email to flow into inboxes, only now for products directed toward kids.
Residents of Utah and Michigan are likely to get less legitimate e-mail, but receive more spam, under new state laws.
I wrote on July 26 that the two states had imposed e-mail taxes that have nothing to do with spam.
And on August 2, I explained that legitimate publishers of opt-in e-mail newsletters would have to pay crushing fees to comply -- more than $1,000 per year per 1,000 subscribers -- if as few as 12 states adopt similar laws and tariffs.
Both states' bills were cleverly labeled "child protection e-mail registries" to get legislators to vote for them.
That's because spammers, just like anyone else, can process their e-mail lists through the registries to identify "kids" and "no kids" addresses.
If people flock to the registries, spammers can easily use them to find out which addresses are likely to be read by kids with cash in their jeans.
My research indicates they fell for contractors seeking profits and state departments seeking more revenue.
The contractor selected to operate the address databases for both Utah and Michigan is known as Unspam Technologies Inc. (formerly Unspam LLC).
The CEO of Unspam is Matthew Prince, an Illinois attorney.
What's certain is that Unspam's back-end system now operates an integrated registry used by both Michigan and Utah.
It costs little or nothing for such a computer system, once established, to process additional e-mail addresses.
Before adoption, the department sent legislators a position paper supporting the bill's passage.
Both laws make it a felony to send a single e-mail message -- even one that is personally typed -- to an address on the registry if the message contains certain otherwise-legal information.
Amazingly, the Michigan law makes a prohibited e-mail message a felony if it merely links to a Web site that advertises something a minor may not purchase.
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