Georgia Registry Law Expected to Sail Through Senate

While e-mail marketers breathed a sigh of relief last week over the death of an Illinois so-called child protection do-not-e-mail bill, the situation concerning a similar bill proposed in Georgia took a grim turn.

Georgia’s Child, Family and School Communications Protection Act, or SB 425, easily passed out of the Senate Science and Technology Committee. The general consensus is that the bill will sail through the Senate and that if it is going to be stopped, it will be stopped in the Georgia House of Representatives.

“The mood of the committee meeting was gleeful on the part of the bill’s supporters,” said Tricia Robinson, chief marketing officer for Atlanta-based e-mail service provider Accucast.

The bill’s supporters are enamored with the pornography-protection aspects of the bill, and the state’s big businesses have larger battles on their hands, she said.

“Delta’s worried about fuel costs and airport taxes, Home Depot’s worried about fuel costs,” said Robinson. “We’ve got major Fortune 20, Fortune 50 corporations here, but they’ve got bigger fights to fight and it’s hard to get these people together. So you end up fighting with this bill with the tobacco lobby, the bar-and-restaurant lobby, the alcohol distributors’ lobby, the smokeless tobacco lobby, and us.”

Robinson also said that members of the committee admitted that the bill is flawed but said its flaws would be addressed in the state’s House of Representatives.

“As a Georgia citizen, it was disappointing for me to sit in a committee hearing and have the chairman of the committee say, ‘we realize that we’re going to have some cleaning up to do and I hate to let House worry about it, but we’re going to pass this bill,’” said Robinson. “They’re taking their trash next door.”

SB 425—introduced by Republican Greg Goggans—would establish a registry similar to those established last summer in Michigan and Utah that allow parents and guardians to register children's e-mail addresses and other “contact points” as off-limits to e-mail with content or links to content illegal for minors to view or buy. Marketers of such material are supposed scrub their lists against these registries once a month.

Utah charges $5 per thousand addresses screened. Michigan charges $7, and Georgia's bill sets a ceiling of 1 cent per e-mail, or $10 per thousand addresses checked.

Marketers contend that as more states consider passing child protection e-mail laws, the resulting costs will price anything inappropriate for minors out of e-mail altogether.

Pornography trade group the Free Speech Coalition is suing Utah. Marketing trade organizations and online advocacy groups have filed amicus briefs in support of the pornographers.