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Unspam, the company that lobbied for so-called child-protection do-not e-mail laws in Utah and Michigan and then got the contracts to run the registries, now has its eye on Georgia, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“Since this is such a bi-partisan issue, most legislators are very open to either authoring or co-sponsoring child protection registry legislation,” said Mathew Prince, CEO of Unspam in the statement. “In fact, we’re anticipating that ultimately nearly every state will have such a law on the books.”

If Prince is even half right, it is difficult to envision a scenario in which any material aimed at adults, even relatively harmless material, such as a newsletter for wine-enthusiasts, could survive.

A “child-protection” do-not e-mail bill is expected to be introduced this year in Illinois by state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock.

Franks is pressing ahead with his bill despite a letter from the Federal Trade Commission saying a children’s e-mail address registry “may provide pedophiles and other dangerous persons with a list of contact points for Illinois children.”

However, it is unclear why Unspam named Georgia, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Unspam’s press-relations representative did not return a message left in her voice mail Friday asking for clarification.

Trevor Hughes, executive director of the E-mail Sender and Provider Coalition, said the ESPC is lobbying in Illinois to get the state’s e-mail-registry bill shot down.

“We are mobilizing forces right now on that and are expecting to be educating a lot public policy makers on exactly what is the reality behind these [registries], and what the FTC said about them,” said Hughes.

Hughes said he is unaware of e-mail registry bills planned in the other three states named in Unspam’s statement.

“I don’t discount for one minute [Prince’s] statement that there may be similar legislation being considered,” he said. “We just aren’t aware of it; We haven’t seen those bills introduced and it’s kind of difficult with a couple hundred legislators in each of those states to figure out who it might be that Unspam has been talking to.”

Utah and Michigan passed laws last year that allow parents and guardians to place minors’ e-mail addresses on so-called child protection registries. The laws make it a crime to send e-mail containing material or links to material it is illegal for minors to view or buy to addresses on the registries.

Some fear that e-mail unknowingly containing links to a Web page that contains an ad for, say, an ‘R’ rated movie could run afoul of Michigan and Utah’s laws. Officials of the two states have said their laws aren’t aimed at legitimate, law-abiding marketers, but both laws contain provisions allowing individuals to sue. As a result, many e-mail marketers contend the registries invite abuse.

Companies that send e-mail containing adult-oriented material are supposed to scrub their e-mail lists against the state registries once a month. Businesses are charged $7 per 1,000 email addresses checked in Michigan, and $5 per 1,000 in Utah.

As a result, a marketer with 100,000 e-mail addresses must pay $6,000 a year to comply with Utah’s law and $8,400 a year to comply with Michigan’s.

It is unknown what other states would charge, but if they charged $6 per thousand addresses checked—the average of Utah and Michigan’s pricing—it would cost a marketer with 100,000 e-mail addresses $28,800 more a year to comply with four new state registry laws, bringing the total to $43,200 a year to comply with laws in just six states.

If all 50 states pass child protection e-mail address registry laws, as Unspam’s Prince predicts, it could cost a marketer with 100,000 e-mail addresses more than $350,000 a year to comply.

Marketers complain that the registry laws put an onerous burden on law-abiding e-mailers for a miniscule segment of the population.

As of last week, Utah’s registry had 1,992 addresses, and 62 schools had registered their domain names to block e-mails to student accounts, and about 160 companies had submitted their email lists for screening, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.. In Michigan, 3,658 e-mail addresses were registered, along with 41 school domains, and about 170 marketers had their lists scrubbed, the Journal reported.

Michigan and Utah alone are already having a chilling effect on the market. Some mailers, such as a well-known cable television company that features some ‘R’ rated programming, have suspended their e-mail programs rather than risk running afoul of the two states’ laws.

Pornography trade group the Free Speech Coalition filed a lawsuit in November trying to get Utah’s registry law overturned, and is considering similar action in Michigan.

In related news, The Utah Division of Consumer Protection has issued its first $2,500 citation under Utah’s child protection registry law to a Canadian online pornography site, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported last week.

On Dec. 4 the site, whose name contains an expletive, sent a sexually explicit message to an e-mail address registered as accessible to a minor, according to Consumer Protection spokesman Thad LeVar, the Tribune reported.

Utah’s registry statute provides for a maximum $2,500 fine per violation. Michigan’s provides for $5,000 per violation up to $250,000 per day.