California is trying a deceptively simple approach to the problem of junk e-mail: It is about to ban spam.
Governor Gray Davis of California said on Tuesday that he would sign into law a bill that outlaws sending most commercial e-mail to anyone in the state not explicitly requested by the recipient. That would make it the most wide-reaching law of any of the 35 other state laws meant to regulate spam -- or any of the proposed bills in Congress.
"We are saying that unsolicited e-mail cannot be sent and there are no loopholes," said Kevin Murray, the Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who had sponsored the bill.
The law, which would also prohibit companies inside the state from sending unsolicited e-mail, would impose fines of US$1000 for each message, up to US$1 million for each campaign.
Moreover, the proponents of the measure say, it promises to carry greater weight than most such laws because it would give individuals the right to file private lawsuits, encouraging action by plaintiff's lawyers even if state prosecutors have other priorities. A similar provision is credited with helping to insure compliance with the federal law against unsolicited faxes.
Marketers vehemently argue that the approach is misguided because the law will do little, they say, to restrain the shadowy spammers responsible for most of the objectionable messages often relayed through foreign computers.
"The people sending the latest penis enlargement schemes are not going to pay attention to this," said Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association. "This is a group of politicians trying to cash in on a popular issue and will create more confusion and problems than solutions," he said.
The new law is similar to one recently enacted in Britain that bans marketing e-mail to people who did not request it. Most other state laws, and the proposed federal law, allow unsolicited e-mail until the recipient asks to receive no more.
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