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Virginia takes
lead role in canning spam
by Virginia
Business Staff
June 2003
Spam
may be dead meat in Virginia under the state’s
tough new laws against bulk e-mailers, but it could
be overridden by federal legislation. Gov. Mark Warner
in April signed legislation allowing criminal penalties
against the biggest spammers including prison terms
of up to five years. But The Washington Post reports
that lobbyists for industries that use e-mail marketing
are trying to get Congress to enact laws that would
supercede stronger state laws.
About
two dozen states have anti-spam laws that allow civil
penalties against spammers. At a signing ceremony at
AOL’s Dulles headquarters, Warner predicted the
Virginia law would be “a model not only for the
nation, but, in my hopes, also for the world.”
A
draft bill that would reportedly be co-sponsored by
Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chair of the House Energy
and Commerce Committee, would ban consumers from suing
spammers and only require commercial e-mail senders
to let people “opt out” of future mailings.
Virginia officials claim half the world’s Internet
traffic flows through the state via networks of companies
such as America Online and UUNet. Some estimates put
spam at up to 70 percent of all e-mail traffic, costing
U.S. businesses more than $10 billion a year.
Virginia
Business - June 2003
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