Spam Laws

One the best places on the Internet to find out everything you wanted to know about the Spam laws at the State and Federal levels is at SpamLaws.com The Federal section is pretty easy reading - there aren't any laws!

The Kansas Law K.S.A. 50-6, 107 was enacted by the legislature in May of 2002 and became effective July 1, 2002. The bill was initially drafted by the Kansas Attorney General Consumer Protection Division and forwarded to the Senate Commerce Committee.

The law isn't quite perfect but it is a great start. The key issue with the law is that only individuals that can demonstrate to the court that the sender could have known that the recipient had a 'Kansas Domiciled' email address can seek relief. That means all the people that use the free online accounts - hotmail, yahoo, netzero - don't have a way of qualifying.

The two best parts of the law are that both business and personal email addresses are covered by the law (whereas in the case of the telephone do not call act, only home phone numbers can be listed) and that individuals can seek relief through small claims court.

The AG's office interpretation of the law is online. Note that this was written under the administration of the previous AG. No one knows what the perspective is of the new AG.