[Air-l] Re: anti-spam law

[Nora Paul]

Local intrepid reporter, Les Suzakamo of the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, had an
article about the increase in child porn spam messages in his December 17,
2001 column:  http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/040240.htm - in
the article it simply says that pornographers are getting bolder.  But there
is good information about the efforts to curb these "services" - most of
which are from overseas.

Nora Paul
Director, Institute for New Media Studies
University of Minnesota


----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura Gurak" <gurakl at umn.edu>
To: "Internet Studies Center" <isc at plato.agricola.umn.edu>; "AIR List"
<air-l at aoir.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 2:18 PM
Subject: anti-spam law


> Thanks to everyone who wrote back regarding my spam question. Anecdotally,
> almost everyone who wrote back indicated that they had in fact noticed a
> rise in porn spam (should we coin a new term: pornspam?) Anyway, one of
our
> graduate students here, Mark Stewart, suggested that perhaps this rise is
a
> last-ditch effort of pornspammers to get their message out before the
> California court heard this case. See below, excerpted from the January 7
> Edupage (for fair use purposes, of course). Others of you suggested that
the
> general rise in spam around the holiday season (thanks to my colleage Dr.
> Andrew Odlyzko, director of our Digital Technology Center, for his
> information on this) might be to blame. Still others noted that perhaps
> there has been a rise in "adult content" since 9/11. Anyway, all of this
is
> anecdotal. Anyone out there in the Internet research world interested in
> doing something more scientific??
> LG
>
>
> ---------------------
> APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS ANTI-SPAM LAW
> Commercial e-mails, or spam, must contain valid return addresses
> and other identifiers that make it easier for consumers to remove
> themselves from mailing lists, according to a ruling upheld
> recently by a California appeals court. The defendants in that
> case, two Palo Alto-based companies, had argued that the previous
> ruling violated the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.
> Because Congress has yet to settle on any comprehensive anti-spam
> law, consumers must rely on state law. But that could result in
> a hodgepodge of restrictions on legitimate Web-based businesses.
> The California ruling requires that commercial e-mailers also
> mark their messages with an "ADV:" in the subject heading, and
> a special "ADV:ADLT" for messages linked to adult content. The
> Supreme Court in October refused to hear a challenge to a
> Washington state law that stringently regulates spam in that
> state.
> (Cnet, 7 January 2002)
>
>
>
> ----------------
> Laura J. Gurak, Ph.D. Associate Professor
> Rhetoric Department, University of Minnesota
> 1994 Buford Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108  v 612-624-3773
> also--Director, Internet Studies Center -- www.isc.umn.edu
> Faculty Fellow, Law School
> gurakL at tc.umn.edu   http://www.rhetoric.umn.edu/faculty/LGurak/
>
>
>
>
>