Unspam PR Tactic Provokes Outrage

Opponents of Utah’s so-called children’s protection e-mail address registry are outraged that the contractor running the registry called a lawsuit against Utah by the Free Speech Coalition “an attempt by pornographers to continue to send spam to children.”

The Free Speech Coalition filed suit against Utah last week trying to get the law that established Utah’s children’s e-mail address registry overturned. The pornography trade group claims Utah’s registry law is preempted by the federal Can Spam Act and that it unconstitutionally interferes with interstate commerce.

The afternoon the suit was announced, an e-mail went out to the press from Grand Rapids, MI-based public relations firm Lambert, Edwards and Associates saying Matthew Prince, CEO of Unspam, the company contracted to run the registry, was available for comment.

“Responding that this is nothing more than pornographers seeking to continue to send spam to children, Mr. Prince is available for comment regarding the issue,” said the e-mail.

Prince defended the assertion in an interview with Direct. “[U]p to 30 percent of the visitors to pornographic Web sites are children, and how they get attracted to them often are by e-mails sent to them,” he said. “I think the adult products industry says ‘we want to get as many eyeballs on our site as possible,’ and therefore; there are a lot of companies out there that are very sloppy about how they manage their lists.”

Tom Hymes, a spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, countered that pornographers don’t make money by spamming children.

“That comment is disgusting and disgraceful. It’s an outrage that he would say that this industry is interested in challenging this law because it wants to send spam to children,” said Hymes. “There is no economic incentive for this industry to want to do that.”

Under Utah’s child protection law and a similar law in Michigan, parents and guardians can register e-mail addresses and “other contact points” used by children as off limits to material illegal for minors to view or buy. Companies that want to send e-mail with such material are supposed to scrub their lists against the registries once per month. Critics say the registries will do nothing to limit pornographic spam in children’s e-mail addresses. The FTC has said the registries may even increase the chances of inappropriate e-mail getting into children’s e-mail boxes.

“The FTC has told Unspam and the state that this thing will create more risk. It does not reduce pornography in kids’ e-mail accounts,” said Trevor Hughes, executive director of the E-mail Service Provider Coalition. “It actually runs the risk of increasing the amount of spam that these kids are going to get. For them to completely ignore all those arguments and defend this on the grounds that they’re defending it is in my mind unconscionable.”

Critics also contend that Unspam has a conflict of interest in defending the registries because it holds the contracts to run them. If the Free Speech Coalition wins its suit against Utah, it is conceivable that Unspam could be out of business or severely damaged as a result.

“One has to wonder why Unspam is defending these registries instead of the state,” said Hughes. “Unspam is terribly conflicted in anything they say on this. They have a financial incentive to defend this registry. If the attorney general or the state legislatures really care about this, they should be out defending it.”

The E-mail Service Provider Coalition plans to file papers with the court supporting the pornographers’ lawsuit.

Prince said he expects Utah’s attorney general to respond to the lawsuit this week. He also said he failed to see a conflict of interest. “We’re doing this because it is something we see as an important issue,” he said. “If the porn guys win, it will hurt our business, but you can make the same argument about the porn guys. If Utah wins, it will hurt their business. Do they have a conflict of interest? … Every side in this has some interest to bear.”

Prince said the debate concerns the right of parents to determine in advance what should stay out of their children’s inboxes.

“The fundamental question is do you have an obligation to take kids off your list if parents specifically ask you to in advance?” said Prince. “I think that’s a pretty fundamental right.”