The Georgia state Senate last week took another step toward helping wipe legal, adult content out of the e-mail marketplace by passing The Georgia Child, Family and School Communications Protection Act.
The bill—which would set up the nation’s third or fourth so-called child-protection do-not e-mail registry, depending on what happens in Iowa—has moved to Georgia’s House of Representatives.
And in a blow to marketers’ lobbying efforts, Georgia’s bill was unexpectedly sent to the state’s House Non-Civil Judiciary Committee.
E-mail executives expected it to move state’s House Science and Technology Committee and were concentrating their lobbying efforts there, according to Tricia Robinson, vice president, marketing services, Premiere Global Services, Atlanta.
Now that it’s in the Non-Civil Judiciary Committee, those lobbying to get the bill stopped will have to start from scratch, said Robinson.
“This is very out of the ordinary. … All of the work we did with the House Science and Technology Committee was for naught,” she said.
Georgia’s do-not e-mail bill would allow parents and guardians to register children’s e-mail addresses as off limits to adult content. Marketers who send e-mail in violation of the bill would face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $200,000.
Though Georgia’s legislators are touting the bill as a tool to protect children from pornography, it is so vaguely worded that e-mailers fear some could use it to take aim at anything illegal for minors to buy—such as model airplane glue.
Under Georgia’s bill, marketers who want to send e-mail with adult-oriented content, such as advertisements for gambling trips or wine-of-the-month-club newsletters, would pay up to $10 per thousand addresses checked to scrub their lists against Georgia’s registry once a month.
E-mail marketers are nervously eyeing Georgia and Iowa as bills similar to so-called child-protection no-e-mail laws in Utah and Michigan make their way through Georgia and Iowa’s state legislatures.
Complying with Utah and Michigan’s laws already costs $5 and $7 per thousand addresses checked, respectively.
Iowa’s bill—twin versions of which are working through that state’s House and Senate simultaneously—would charge marketers up to $3 per thousand addresses checked each month.
Marketers fear that as more and more states pass these laws, it will become unaffordable to send commercial e-mail with legal, adult-oriented content.
Ironically, Rep. Janet Petersen, the lead sponsor of The Iowa Kids No E-Contact Act in that state’s House, has a Master’s degree in marketing from Drake University and worked for an ad agency in Des Moines before she went into lawmaking.
“We were pretty integrated so I did direct marketing, advertising and public relations,” said Petersen.
“I think marketing is a great field and I hope to work with them on my bill so that it doesn’t harm marketers in any way, but also so that they understand that parents and people want to do something to curb the amount of inappropriate e-mails coming into their homes,” she said.
“I hope people in marketing will contact me and tell me what we can do to work together on this,” she added.
Iowa’s bill is modeled after Michigan’s child-protection do-not-e-mail law passed last year.
Petersen said she was working on an amendment that would exempt opt-in communications, such as wine-of-the-month club newsletters.
The states are introducing child-protection e-mail registries as a result of lobbying from Unspam LLC, the company that runs the registries in Michigan and Utah. Unspam's president, Matthew Prince, is also helping the state legislators craft their do-not-e-mail bills.
According to a recent report, Prince claims legislators from California, Ohio, Texas, Florida, Missouri, and New York have also contacted Unspam about crafting do-not-e-mail legislation.
Since it is difficult to know an e-mail recipient’s location, marketers believe they must either stop sending e-mail with adult content or use each state’s registry on a monthly basis.
Iowa's do-not-e-mail legislation would allow e-mail box providers, individuals and the state attorney general to sue for attorney fees plus $5,000 per message up to $250,000 per day the violations occur.
Pornography trade group the Free Speech Coalition is suing Utah trying to get the state’s registry declared in violation of the federal Can-Spam Act and/or an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce.
Six marketing trade groups and Internet civil-liberties advocacy organizations have filed court papers supporting the porn group’s lawsuit.
