States rush to pass laws to fight spam

WASHINGTON — By the end of this year, all 50 states may have anti-spam laws on the books, and Congress, which has never been under greater pressure to take action to fight unwanted e-mail, could also adopt a national law. But there’s little hope that legislation will bring IT managers much relief.

So far, 26 states have adopted spam laws that do things such as making forged address headers illegal. Other laws require that “ADV,” short for advertisement, be included in the subject line of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Emily Hackett, state policy director of the Internet Alliance in Washington, which represents some large Internet service providers, said states without anti-spam laws will soon have them. “There isn’t any opposition to it,” she said.

But the state bills are troubling for the marketing industry. Some allow lawsuits against spammers that violate posted policies, which scares companies that use unsolicited e-mail to prospect for customers. There are also states eyeing a “do-not-spam” list similar to do-not-call telemarketing lists.

Congress is being pushed to act, in part to preempt state laws with a national one. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in New York, long an opponent of any spam regulation, is now backing a federal law to end the hodgepodge of state laws. No bills have been introduced yet, but that’s expected to change.

“It’s very difficult to keep track of varying state laws,” said Louis Mastria, a DMA spokesman, who said that state laws are ineffective because a marketer doesn’t necessarily know the physical address of a person being solicited. The state laws “set up legitimate e-mail marketers for a black eye,” he said.

Another major proponent of action is Microsoft, which last month ran ads in newspapers saying that “new, strong laws are needed” to combat spam. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is planning a three-day forum on spam next month, an event that’s seen as a pivotal gathering of all sides in the debate.

The success of any legislation will depend on enforcement, said Michael Redman, information systems director at Nicholson Manufacturing in Seattle. Washington has an anti-spam law, but Redman said he’s seen little impact from it. “There is a substantial amount of legislation out there already,” he said. “If it’s ignored and not enforced, it doesn’t do us any good.”

There is much skepticism that new laws will curb spam, because finding the most egregious spammers is difficult. “People are setting up dummy corporations and fly-by-night operations,” said Stephen Winkelman, an Internet attorney at Fennemore Craig in Phoenix.

Accompanying the push for laws are efforts to create standards for regulating e-mail.

The ePrivacy Group in Philadelphia is developing open-standards, machine-readable technology that sets minimum principles for ensuring that an Internet service provider doesn’t filter a digitally signed message from a business.

Filtering sometimes screens out too much information, said Vincent Schiavone, the company’s president. “We don’t see a way where you can fix e-mail with the current protocol,” he said.