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Re: spam whore, norcal-systems.net

  • From: Dean Anderson
  • Date: Wed Feb 03 15:27:55 1999

At 11:58 PM 2/2/1999 -0500, Ravi Pina wrote:
>In regards to no law dealing with "unsolicited or misleading electronic
>mail", what about Washington State Law RCW 19.190.020.  Source:
>ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/rcw/title_19/chapter_190/rcw_19_190_020

Norcal appears to be in California. Av8 is in New Hampshire or Mass.
depending on which mail server was used. The communication between the two
is interstate commerce subject to federal law. Washington state law
wouldn't apply.

The rest of this is a bit of a digression on the Washington law.

The Internet is primarily interstate. So state laws can probably be easily
challenged as unconstitutional attempts to regulate interstate commerce.
This one is more careful to make sure its boundaries are the state of
Washington.

This particular law is foolishness because it only applies to things that
are already illegal: Using a third party domain name is a trademark
infringement anywere in the US.  There are several successful court cases
on just this topic.  Much spam doesn't have a misleading subject. Some
does. But I'd say more than half or 3/4ths doesn't.  The part that has
misleading subjects aren't the major spammers.  And not least, its not
likely that any major provider is going to be "Washington only". Aol might
have servers in Washington, but who knows what users are in Washington.
The laws major effect is that spammers in Washington must include something
in the subject to indicate its commercial. Big deal. Not much of an
anti-spam law.  

The interesting thing about this particular law is the part you didn't
mention. It includes a section about immunity from liability for blocking
UCE.  Since the only liability is Federal & criminal, and would be found in
a federal court with fines payable to a federal court and jailtime served
in a federal prison, I'm not sure how this would work. There is a civil
liability section in the ECPA, but I didn't think a state could invalidate
a judgement made by a federal court. But its certainly a new twist.  This
will be an interesting one to watch.

		--Dean

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