The man who crafted one of the most infamous pieces of anti-spam legislation in e-mail marketing history, California state Sen. Kevin Murray, is losing office as a result of term limits.
In 1990, California passed a law putting a limit of three two-year terms for assembly members and two four-year terms for state senators.
Murray will be out of office when California’s current legislative session ends in late August or early September.
Murray’s press secretary did not return a voice mail message left Friday asking about the Senator’s plans. However, according to California political Web site AroundTheCapitol.com, Murray is running for state Treasurer.
Murray in 2003 authored SB 186 which would have outlawed commercial e-mail sent to or from a California e-mail address unless the advertiser—not just the sender—had direct consent or a pre-existing business relationship with the recipient.
The Los Angeles Democrat sent shivers through the e-mail marketing industry when he told the New York Times: “We don’t differentiate between Disney and Viagra. If you go out and rent a list of e-mail addresses, by definition you are not a legitimate business. You are the person we are trying to stop.”
He later said the law was intended solely to go after spammers who harvest e-mail addresses, but his backtracking offered little comfort to e-mail marketers since his bill’s wording wasn’t consistent with his claim and gave individual consumers the right to sue.
Many in e-mail marketing believed Murray’s bill would devastate the industry.
However, the federal Can-Spam Act of 2003 overrode Murray’s bill on the day both of them went into effect, Jan. 1 2004.
Most recently, in September California passed SB 97, a reworked version of Murray’s 2003 bill that includes what Can-Spam didn’t override and provides for stiffer penalties for fraudulent spam. California’s law allows recipients, Internet service providers and the state attorney general to sue for $1,000 per message, up to $1 million per incident.
Under Can-Spam, a state attorney general can sue for $250 per illegal e-mail message up to $2 million and Internet service providers can sue for $100 per illegal e-mail message up to a $1 million
Murray also sponsored the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005, which went into effect this month.
Phishing is where thieves send e-mail purporting to be from a bank or other institution in an attempt to get recipients to provide their account information so the thieves can clean the recipients’ accounts out.
Murray was elected to California’s legislature in 1994. After two terms there, he was elected to the state’s Senate.
According to Project Vote Smart, Murray supported the interests of the California Chamber of Commerce 29% of the time.
On the issues that the California National Federation of Independent Business considered to be the most important in 2003-2004, Murray voted their preferred position just 14% of the time, according to Project Vote Smart.
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