Chicago Tribune Editorial on Spam and UCE

I found Don Wycliff's editorial this Thursday very interesting in view of our recent high-level discussions on unsolicited mail, in particular, HTML messages which automatically download and display pornographic images:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0201100043jan10.column

Don hits the nail on the head, stating "Newspapers, which must be as open to the public as possible, ought be loath to close themselves off in any way that can be avoided."

He also mentions the two-year-old Illinois anti-spam law. The act provides both legal remedies if the company suffers "actual damages" (I'd like to see the legal definition of this term), and also protection from liability for "action taken in good faith" to stop spam. The full text of the law (and lots of other good anti-spam info) can be found at this location:

http://law.spamcon.org/us-laws/states/il/ema-91-0244.shtml