• by John Gaffney , April 30, 2003

The state of Virginia passed two anti-spam laws yesterday carrying stiff legal penalties for fraudulent email usage. Now legitimate email marketers are concerned that those penalties will be hard to enforce.

"We've been at this since 1997," said Robert Hicks, president of email marketing company Admail.net. "It looks to me like it's a very positive development for this business. However, the biggest issue is enforcement. How do you bring these people to justice?"

The two bills to raise the penalty to a felony for spam. The Virginia governor's office claims the new provisions of the Virginia Computer Crimes Act make it the toughest such law in the United States. The bills were signed by the Governor in a ceremony at the world headquarters of America Online on its Dulles campus.

Not only was enforcement on the mind of email marketers it was also addressed by Virginia attorney general Jerry Kilgore. "We're not going to be able to stop all of it. We're not going to be able to stop the majority of it," he told The Washington Post. "But we will be able to send a message that there are penalties."

Hard-core hackers and spammers - who produce the most offensive and persistent e-mail solicitations, actually aimed at crippling servers -- will now be faced with a class 6 felony in Virginia, which carries a prison term of between one and five years and a fine. Prosecutors and the Attorney General will also be authorized to seize profits, computer equipment and all property connected with the spamming crime. "The statute has been carefully drafted to ensure it targets only the most egregious offenders and cannot be applied to an innocent party who happens to send out a large mailing," the law states.

Hicks was concerned that the act, even if copied by other states or made a federal statute, would drive spammers top international territories and make them even tougher to stop.

"We're already seeing spammers from Russia and Japan," he said.