On Friday, with little fanfare, and even less press coverage, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senator Kevin Murray’s SB 1457 into law.
A shadow of its former self, SB 1457 still provides spam recipients with something which they haven’t had for some time: a private right of action. SB 1457 provides that an ISP, the Attorney General, or an individual recipient, may sue a sender for sending email either from California or to a California email address, where the email has false, forged, or misleading headers.
The new law provides statutory damages of up to $1,000 per email.
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It costs $25 or so to file in small claims. The only other cost is time. You get $1000 per victory. Buy something and follow the money to collect. It does work – if you have a fax, you probably get less than one junk fax a day, thanks to a similar law.
Don’t get excited: First, the federal CAN-SPAM ACT superceeds this so SPAM is very narrowly defined. [Folks who SPAM you faking addresses, or with no way to get off their list, etc.] Then you have to find them. Then you have to sue them [which costs money]. then, if and when you win, you have to collect it. Now, if the attorney General rushes out and sues SPAMMERS right and left, goody-goody. But don;t hold your breath. You’ll turn blue first and die. SPF will do a better job dealing with SPAM than any government action ever will. Support a self policing Internet community. Keep Anarchy alive, and the government out of the Internet.