Maryland passes stringent antispam bill

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Maryland lawmakers have passed the nation's toughest antispam bill, calling for stiff fines and as much as 10 years in jail for people sending fraudulent, unwanted e-mail.

The House of Delegates late Monday voted unanimously in favor of a bill that criminalizes the worst kinds of spam, which has flooded the inboxes of computer users and cost businesses billions of dollars nationwide.

The Maryland Senate approved the same bill unanimously last week. Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich has not committed to signing the bill, but lawmakers said they are optimistic he will within the next month.

If signed into law, the Maryland statute would be the strictest in the nation, establishing some of the highest penalties and the least amount of tolerance for fraudulent, unsolicited e-mail advertisements.

Spammers who send more than 10 unsolicited e-mail advertisements per day with false or misleading information to computer users in Maryland could be subject to as much as five years in jail or a $10,000 fine. The same penalties could be levied against spammers who send 100 e-mails in a week or 1,000 in a month. Repeat offenders could incur as much as 10 years of jail and a $25,000 fine.

Virginia's antispam law, which was passed last year and has been considered the toughest bill to date, offers similar penalties but levies charges when a spammer has sent 10,000 messages or more. Virginia is the only state that can bring criminal charges against spammers.

The Maryland bill contains several provisions that criminalize methods spammers use to gather e-mail addresses and hide their identities. Anyone who uses special programs to "harvest" e-mail addresses off Web sites could be prosecuted, as could anyone using a hijacked computer to send spam. It also would be illegal to falsify information when registering for an e-mail address or Internet domain name.

The bill allows Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran to go after spammers who target e-mail users in Maryland, even if they send the mail from outside the state.

"Obviously, spam is an exponentially escalating problem," said Delegate Neil Quinter, Howard County Democrat and the lead sponsor of the bill. "The civil statutes aren't getting the job done. We thought it was necessary to take it to the next level."

In addition to modeling on Virginia's law, which resulted in the indictment of three suspected spammers living in North Carolina, Maryland's law follows the passage of the federal Can-Spam Act, which went into effect Jan. 1. The Maryland law, if passed, would not be pre-empted by the federal law because it imposes penalties only for fraudulent activities.

Internet service providers likely would play a large role in the enforcement of the new measure, because most of them track the amount of spam complaints to them and maintain their own investigation teams.

America Online, for instance, said it receives between 7 million and 10 million spam complaints per day from members who click a "report spam" button on the AOL e-mail program. AOL used the figures to file civil charges against a suspected spam ring in Florida and was heavily involved in the North Carolina case.

"AOL members are going to play an integral and critical part in helping [Internet service providers]," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said.

In addition to imposing stiff fines and jail time, the Maryland bill would allow the state to seize computer equipment and software used in spamming and any money that the defendant earned from spamming but had not received.

Maryland also could levy civil fines against a spammer at a rate of $25,000 for each day they violated the law, or as much as $8 for each illegal e-mail message. The state also could seek an injunction to stop the spammer.

"What I'm really hoping is that this really becomes the model for other states," said Sen. Rob Garagiola, Montgomery County Democrat and the lead sponsor of the bill in the Senate. "It goes after the most egregious spammers ... a lot of them are still living in the United States because they are living a good life."