Utah Anti-Kids-Spam Registry "a Flop"

Eric Goldman writes "A couple of years ago Utah enacted a 'Child Protection Registry.' The idea was to allow parents to register kids' email addresses and then to require certain email senders to filter their lists against that database before sending their emails. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the Utah registry has been a 'financial flop.' Initially projected to generate $3-6 million in revenues for Utah, it has instead produced total revenues of less than $200,000. 80% of this has gone to Unspam, the for-profit registry operator; Utah's share of the registry's revenues has been a paltry $37,445. Worse, Utah has spent $100,000 (so far) to defend the private company from legal challenges by free-speech, advertising, and porn interests."

Let me get this straight

[fatduck]

From TFA:

The Utah law requires companies that sell adult-oriented products and services to submit their e-mail lists to Unspam to be "scrubbed" of addresses to which minors have access. The cost is half a cent for every address they submit, and Unspam gets 80 percent of the money.

So they passed a law requiring mass email-senders to pay for a service from a specific private corporation? Brilliant.

More stupidity

[zappepcs]

Yet another attempt to regulate the Internet. Apparently, governments need help to understand that there is no way to line their pockets by regulating the internet, and no matter what they make into law, it will never apply to people in other countries.

They need to spend money on educating users, and supporting people that will help users protect themselves from the threats that will continue to happen. Just as MS or antivirus software vendors: as soon as they plug one hole another appears. Spam is even worse. They were never able to stop people from sending junk mail to your mail box, they can't stop people from stealing ID information, and they will never be able to control the bits on the Internet to stop emails from getting to your inbox with laws.

Parents need to protect their own children, and admittedly, they could use some sound solid advice. Why don't government groups spend time with that problem?

Re:Let me get this straight

[BakaHoushi]

I have an idea. Let's tinker and fine-tune the law to say "Politicians of any race, creed, party, or ideology shall not be allowed to use, be near, or think about any piece of technology more advanced than the ballpoint pen. Nor shall any legislation based on said technology ever be even mentioned."

I don't think I've ever read anything good come out of any proposal made by a politician about the Internet. Senators, Representatives.... Please, go home (walking in the snow, uphill both ways, of course) back to your world where the only "net" you know anything about is for fishing. Leave the Internet and its policies to people who aren't you.

How is aggregating tons of email addresses

[antifoidulus]

in a central locatio, esp. those belonging to children, a GOOD idea? I'm surprised the spammers weren't using them to harvest email addresses....

Re:Let me get this straight

[Kenrod]

It is common for state regulations to be enforced by private sub-contractors which charge fees. This means less cost for the government.

In this case, because there is a free speech issue with the regulation, both the state and sub-contractor are getting sued instead instead collecting fees. So the regulation is costing money instead of making it.

My advice for the people of Utah is that if they believe the regulation is a good one, why should it matter if it turns a profit? If protecting kids is their goal, they should fight this to the bitter end.

The private sector saves us again

[sfjoe]

80% of this has gone to Unspam, the for-profit registry operator; Utah's share of the registry's revenues has been a paltry $37,445. Worse, Utah has spent $100,000 (so far) to defend the private company from legal challenges by free-speech, advertising, and porn interests."

Conservatives would have us believe that privatization is the solution to all problems. It seems that it's really only a solution to the problem of falling profits.

Willful ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been known for years that e-mail opt-out lists are completely unworkable for controlling spam. None -- absolutely zero -- attempts have ever been successful.

So Utah legislators decided that they -- and they alone -- would be the ones to implement the very first successful opt-out list.

It takes willful ignorance to believe that you will succeed where thousands before you have failed. Utah legislators must have deliberately ignored all advice given to them by the technical experts.

This is not ordinary hubris. This is a special kind of hubris that's infused with a stubborn, childish refusal to educate oneself.

It just needs more..

[k1e0x]

YAY GOVERNMENT!

Give this project more money THEN it will work. Go government go! Your the solution to every problem! Whoo!

(Alright so I'm kinda jaded today with our suck ass government and there suck ass programs.)

Re:Let me get this straight

[BakaHoushi]

This is true. But, IIRC, wasn't its initial purpose something along the lines of military communication in the event of an emergency? I seem to recall something like that, and I'd like to see what senators/reps. and such were involved.

Regardless, it feels almost like the Internet was an accident in that way. A great accident, IMHO, but an accident nonetheless. And I can't help but feel the vast majority of lawmakers have no clue as to the Internet or how it works. To be fair, I'll admit my knowledge of the infrastructure of the net is rather limited, but on the other hand, that would be why I don't submit proposals for new laws on it. I just can't help but get this feeling like we're trying to explain a combustion engine to 4th century British peasants.

Reading about the idea here, I can't help but think, "What the hell were they thinking?" I mean, how many spammers are "legit" anyway? How many would listen to such a list? How would this generate a profit when it would obviously require extensive maintenance and, of course, the buttload of lawsuits that would happen (let's face it, what DOESN'T end in a lawsuit these days?)?

Nobody markets that any more

[Animats]

I don't think much spam is aimed at kids any more. Most of the spam I get (after ordinary spam filtering) is either for 1) Viagra, or 2) penny stocks. Neither subject is likely to interest kids much.

Looking at the last ten spams in the trash:

1. "???? IS SET TO ROCK YOUR PORTFOLIO!"
2. "Discount Pharmacy Online"
3. "Thank you for your loan request, which we recieved (misspelling in original) yesterday."
4. Repeat of #2.
5. "???? have released very hot news. Check this out, info and call to your brocker (in original) right now!!"
6. " Buy your drugs from the comfort of your home and save up to 20% on pharmaceutical products."
7. "$49 Windows XP Pro w/SP2"
8. Another #2.
9. "Los mejores precios del mercado en Notebook, desde $357.000!" (from Santiago, Chili)
10. "Great and Powerful, by Leonid Pisnoy" (in Russian; seems to be a political rant)

None of these are "harmful to children". They're mostly aimed at adults with room-temperature IQs.

forgetaboutit

[Anonymous Coward]

Valentine had more trouble remembering last summer's conversation about hiring Hatch. "I have no idea," he said. "I don't remember anything about this." House Speaker Greg Curtis also had difficulty recalling the meeting.

It seems like there are a lot of forgetful minds in the U.S. government. Maybe there needs to be some kind of memorization test before anyone is allowed to work for or with the government. I don't know or recall if they already have one or not. I'm not sure. I don't remember.

Re:More stupidity

[zappepcs]

I personally would vote for subsidies to small businesses (VARs) that provide free or low cost training to home user's with kids on how to secure their home networks or PCs in order to protect themselves and kids from unwanted spam, and malicious websites. That means everything from mandating user friendly books on how to install and maintain software tools etc. to subsidies for Linux distributors who put up web pages that explain how to protect themselves. It wouldn't take much effort to get this going in a way that it becomes common knowledge. The money most needed is for public awareness campaigns. Everyone knows how expensive that sort of advertising is and I think that the government could well sponsor that with subsidies so as to avoid promoting one product over another. Its always political, but any news of it all would increase awareness of how to use tools and equipment that would help protect users from malicious entities on the Internet.

Remember what was done when conmen were conning old people out of their savings? This isn't much different in its roots. Prey on the naive to take their money or resources. (warning MS bash coming) MS and others have done the worst thing that they can possibly do; they proclaim their product to be the safest OS yet, or safest way to surf etc. This is false and misleading, and leads to bewilderment by users. They can't trust anyone it seems and they don't know where to look or who to ask on how to protect themselves. Many blindly think that having a 6 month old copy of Symantec means they will be safe. Many think that Vista will be better, and that reloading the OS will clean out any virii that are on their machine. Many believe that there is no way to stop malicious software or protect against it.

The government could do several things to sponsor awareness, promote it... alas sadly, that will never get them any money so it is difficult to get them to see what needs to be done. Businesses only want to do such things in as much as it will further increase their revenues. I think that the F/OSS community at large has the most to gain by an awareness program.

Re:More stupidity

[cgenman]

"there is no way to line their pockets by regulating the internet,"

This is not true, unforutnately. However, they need to realize that one cannot regularte the source of information on the internet, only the end users in your jurisdiction. Want to tax your citizens who are people buying used cars over the internet? Ok add a tax as they bring the car in for registration. Want to tax the sender of an MP3 of a local band in Batswana? Not going to happen.

This particular piece of legislation was doomed to fail, as Utah legislators did't realize that most spam comes from groups in Russia with lists of millions of e-mail addresses all around the world. They have no way of knowing if [e-mail] is in Utah or not, and even if they did they wouldn't care.

1/2 cent? You can find e-mail lists with 1 billion addresses on them or more. You're asking someone outside of your jurisdiction to pay you 5 million dollars to go to the trouble of vetting their addresses of your citizens? You'd be luck to convince them to agree if you did that for free (which it really should be). Quite frankly, this makes no sense. You're strongly disincentivizing a behavior which has a negative effect on someone's business and no positive one. Personally, I feel like the legislators, not the state, should be forced to pay for the legal fees in the particular case due to simple gross negligence on their part.