The commerce clause, living with gophers and spam ain't no meet ma

From: Pesach Lattin <pace_at_adspyre.com>
Date: Fri 10 Oct 2003 10:36:55 -0500

Chris Ulrich asks if the California Law will stand up. Hmmm. The answer
actually is pretty obvious: In California it might, but as soon as it's
challenged federally the law will be struck down. There isn't a doubt in
my mind and most legal experts. In fact all state laws governing email
will be killed based on the COMMERCE CLAUSE of the constitution which
gives the Federal Government the right to regulate interstate commerce.
QUOTING: "The Congress shall have power to... regulate commerce with
foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian
tribes."

     Some experts, including myself, point out that any law governing
commercial email transactions would have a serious problem since the
chances are most of them come from other states and are thus interstate
commerce. There are already several cases, including one when NYS tried
to regulate the sales of cigarettes (Sante Fe Natural Tobacco v. Spitzer
) over the internet with its citizens, which pointed out that the
Internet *IS* an interstate commerce vehicle. Several lawsuits have
already been dismissed based on this. Federal courts actually haven't
addressed this yet, but if a federal anti-spam law is passed, all the
other spam laws will have to be questioned immediately...

   Rodney Wittaker addresses the difference between spam and snail mail
marketing. I think this has been said 1000 times, so let's go over it
really fast. Snail Mail marketing is a cost on the mailer (ie, pays the
postal service to stuff your box).. Spam marketing costs the consumer
time and money - same as when your fax machine is off the hook with
illegal ads. I am an email marketer, btw! However, I have had to switch
my email address numerous times because its not just one spam, but
thousands a day. Yes, THOUSANDS A DAY. My COO had the same problem and
was spending 30 minutes a day deleting spam and finding the real email.
We both just changed our email addresses and did an auto responder
informing people of the problem.

   Marci de Vreis says she advises clients to make their own lists
instead of buying them. Smart move Marci!! Unless they are established
email marketers, it would be silly for them to do otherwise. So many
lists are oversold, spammed, remarketed, unclean, etc that you any
client who buys a list is risking having his name blacklisted through
all the nutcases out there.

  Anyway, I hope I was a little bit informative

  Lord Pesach Lattin
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[This post was somewhat edited by the moderator to remove sexually
oriented comments and self-promotional remarks. The substantive
content is welcome and unmodifed. --Cliff]




Received on Fri Oct 10 2003 - 10:36:55 CDT