Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/06/27/mail-laws-spell/ Think of how this affects Politech. When the laws go into effect on August 1, what happens if I send off-color material to the list (hey, it happens) and an email address of a Politech subscriber is on Michigan's list? Could I get criminally prosecuted? There seems to be a defense to conviction in the Michigan law but not necessarily in the Utah one. I'm hardly alone among list owners either. People haven't been paying attention and, technically, could soon be criminals. -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Weekly column: Utah, Michigan e-mail laws spell trouble for senders [fs] Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 10:19:09 -0700 From: Brad Templeton <btm@private> Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> To my mind we need not even get to the question of whether these laws violate the 1st amendment. I remain shocked that all the state E-mail laws have not been struck down on commerce clause grounds. Inherent in E-mail for most people is you don't know what state you are sending a mail to, or if you are sending it within the USA at all. In fact I happen to know that the state for Mr. McCullah will shortly change, as it does frequently for many people. These laws change that by creating a requirement that you know what state you are mailing, and then learn, and obey the e-mail laws of that state. Or, I suppose, learn, know and obey simultaneously the sometimes contradictory laws of all 50 states and all nations of the world. Whether you love or hate the state laws, having so many different regimes of e-mail law is so clearly untenable I am amazed it hasn't been struck down yet. A law like this one could be federal, and then we could talk about its first amendment implications. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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