California Anti-Spam Laws Easing

California Getting Soft On Spam - 05/10/2009

Traditionally, California has some of the strictest anti-spam laws in the USA. Anyone can sue for spam violations and can recover up to $1,000 per spam message received. However, recently two judges have issued rulings shooting down California's spam laws, instead favoring the national CAN-SPAM ACT. In the most recent case, a judge from LA dismissed a spam lawsuit against Value Click, who violated California's anti-spam law by sending as many as 45,000 emails with false or misleading headers and subject lines. The judge said the plaintiff did not manage to show that Value Click had sent more than 24 of those messages, not that this mattered because the case was also dismissed because it did not violate the CAN-SPAM act which prohibits "falsity or deception" in messages. The judge ruled that fraudulent messages are not just messages with misinformation but messages where people "relied on the message and lost money." Therefore, the judge ruled that the plaintiff had not been a victim of fraud.