Connecticut Child No-E-Mail Bill Moves Forward
Connecticut’s so-called child protection do-not-e-mail bill yesterday passed out of the state’s joint judiciary committee and moved one step closer to becoming law.
Like similar laws in Michigan and Utah, Connecticut’s bill would allow parents in the state to register children’s e-mail addresses and other “contact points” as off limits to content illegal for minors to view or buy.
The bill would require marketers of legal, adult material, such as wine-of-the-month clubs, to scrub their lists against the registry once per month.
Dubbed S.B. 46, Connecticut’s child no-e-mail bill now heads to the Senate floor. It will also have to pass through the House before it reaches the governor’s desk.
Georgia, Iowa, Wisconsin and Hawaii are also considering child no-e-mail bills.
Since e-mail addresses typically don’t have geographical information attached to them, marketers of adult-oriented products and services believe they’ll have to use each state’s registry every month to comply with child-no-e-mail laws.
As a result, the registries have the potential to price legal adult content out of e-mail.
Pornography trade group the Free Speech Coalition is suing Utah trying to gets its child-no-email registry law overturned.
