States Can Still Go After Spammers For Deceptive Spam

from the small-loophole dept

When CAN SPAM first passed, one of the complaints against it was that it wiped out every state anti-spam law - many of which were much tougher than the federal law. However, Wired News is pointing out that there was one loophole that many states are now trying to use. States can still create and enforce anti-spam laws that target "falsity and deception" in commercial emails. Since an awful lot of spam does both, that gives them some leeway (though, not very much). Still, it sounds like some states are trying to take advantage of this (helped with a push from folks like AOL). So, perhaps we will see some more state-level spam prosecutions. Of course, it would seem that "falsity and deception" in any kind of commercial announcement should already be illegal for a variety of other reasons, whether or not it's spam, so it's a little unclear if additional spam-specific laws are needed for just this aspect.

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