A week after Utah’s Deseret Morning News ran a short, inaccurate, one-sided article announcing that the state’s Parent Teachers Association is giving legal support to the state’s so-called child protection do not e-mail registry, the paper weighed in with an equally lame-brained editorial.
Headlined “E-mail Registry a Good Thing,” the editorial begins by explaining that Utah’s child no-email registry is under legal assault by the adult entertainment industry and others who claim the registry unduly burdens interstate commerce and violates the First Amendment, among other things.
“One would think the idea that consumers have a right not to have ideas forced upon them is a basic part of the American way of life,” the editorial says, indicating the writer fails to grasp that registry opponents aren’t asking to force their e-mail on others, only to be reasonably free to communicate with people who want to hear from them.
“Similar restrictions were established and upheld in the 1960s when the adult entertainment industry was caught mailing items to potential customers. That same principle applies here, albeit via modern technology.”
Well, not exactly. By writing about the adult industry “mailing items to potential customers,” the Deseret News is referring to prospecting. Child no-e-mail registries do nothing to stop outlaw prospectors.
Rather, they exact astronomical fees from companies to filter their customer lists. By definition, companies using the registry offer ample evidence that they’re trying to abide by the law. Conversely, companies that need policing, such as those that harvest addresses, won’t use the registry and are often out of the state’s jurisdiction.
The Deseret News’s editorial writer finishes by demonstrating an inability to grasp basic economics.
“Such a registry in no way prohibits the manufacture or chills the marketing of these businesses. They can continue to market to adult customers. A registry ought to enable them to better target age-appropriate customers.”
First, marketers—responsible or not—don’t need overpriced help from Utah’s zany state legislature in “targeting” age-appropriate customers.
And no one to be taken seriously in this debate thinks the registries won’t prohibit or chill marketing. Utah’s costs $5 a thousand addresses checked. Michigan charges $7 per thousand. Unspam, the company running the registries, has made no secret of its goal to get these registries operational in as many states as possible. Marketers of anything it is illegal for children to view or buy will have to use each one, every single month, layering charge after charge on their e-mail efforts.
No chilling effect? How about forcing the Deseret Morning News to start matching what e-mailers have to pay these cockamamie registries for each of its subscribers, currently $12 per thousand if we add up Michigan and Utah, more if other states follow with registries of their own. Then let’s have a chat with the Deseret News’s editorial writer about chilled markets and the ability they can have to prevent some people from making their mortgages when their employers can no longer afford to reach customers.
