Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on April 2, 2003, to require senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail (“spam”) to Michigan residents to conspicuously place in the e-mail the sender's legal name, correct street address, a functioning return electronic address, and a valid internet domain name. The message would be required to include in a subject line "ADV:" as the first four characters for a commercial e-mail. Also, senders would be required to provide a convenient, no-cost mechanism to notify the sender not to send any future e-mail to the recipient, including a toll-free telephone number to call to be excluded from future mailings. The bill also prohibits the transfer of software which has the purpose of enabling the falsification of e-mail transmission or routing information. Penalties of up to a $5,000 fine and one year in jail are provided, and greater penalties for using deceptive practices. Recipients of unsolicited e-mails, or Internet service providers, would be able to sue for actual damages, or the lesser of $10 per unsolicited message received or transmitted through an e-mail service provider, or $25,000 for each day a violation occurs, plus legal costs

The vote was 107 in favor, 0 opposed and 2 not voting

(House Roll Call 127 at House Journal 38)

Click here to view bill details.

I do hope that it passes. It is long over due.

SPAM is a serious problem and there's no question that state and federal governments need to participate in the solution. Unfortunately, HR 4519 has serious flaws that may very well result in MORE SPAM!

The most significant problem with 4519 is that it is a strict "opt-out" plan that requires each recipient to respond back to each source of unsolicited E-Mail. Quoting from the Michigan Attorneey General Web site...

"DON'T RESPOND
Never respond to junk e-mail. Although SPAMmers say they will remove you from their mailing list if you send them an "opt out" request, many use your response as an indicator that your account is active and will send you additional unsolicited commercial e-mail or sell your address to other marketers."

Worse yet, HR 4519 now gives senders 14 days to remove your E-Mail address from their lists. This is a license to SPAM for 2 weeks! Think about it...if each source was given 2 weeks to stuff your in-box, then changed their identity and had another 2 weeks, how much junk mail would you receive?

A new version of the Senate bill (SB 357) takes a major step in the right direction by creating a single state-wide "do-not-SPAM" list that all sources of unsolicited E-Mail must recognize. This is similar to the up-coming telephone "do-not-call" list and permits recipients to "opt-out" from all SPAM covered by the legislation with a single action. Certainly there's technical difficulties with such a list, but I think those can be overcome.

I'd also like to see specific protections for providers and their current efforts to limit SPAM. In other words, nothing about this legislation should imply that E-Mail not addressed by the legislation is not SPAM or in any way endorsed by the State and efforts by providers to limit other abusive mail should be protected.

There's other issues with this legislation, some technical and some not, that make it problematic. I stongly support anti-SPAM legislation that works. Unfortunately, as passed HR 4519 is counterproductive. Hopefully these problems will be resolved as House and Senate versions are reconciled.