Not long ago, it was illegal to sell alcohol, tobacco, gambling and pornography to children in the state of Utah. However, it was legal to send children electronic advertisements for those very same adult products. In 2004, Utah's Legislature decided to pass common-sense legislation to rectify this problem: the Child Protection Registry Act.
The Tribune's editorial page called the law "a much-needed way to protect children from online messages meant for adults." The law allows Utahns to register, at no cost, their email or other electronic addresses as off-limits to solicitations for regulated adult products. If someone sends a prohibited message to a registered address, the parents or the state can prosecute.
Just as AT&T administers the national do-not-call list, my company, Unspam, was chosen to administer this new program. It is important to note that no Utah tax dollars have ever been paid to Unspam. Instead, we generate the revenue needed to support the program by charging a small fee to the companies complying with the law.
Today, more than 175,000 addresses are protected under the law and hundreds of adult marketers comply.
Unfortunately, some adult-product marketers oppose the law, and the pornography industry sued the state of Utah in federal court. The pornographers argued, in essence, that they have a constitutional right to send porn to Utah's kids.
I was surprised to learn that if you merely act as a contractor for the state you can be sued for its laws even if, as was the case here, there is no allegation you did anything wrong. The effect of Unspam being named was to waste our resources, perhaps in an attempt to kill the program without overturning the law.
After spending tens of thousands of dollars developing a constitutional defense for the state's law, our legal funds were depleted and we were forced to withdraw from the case. Fortunately, the state chose to retain the constitutional law experts we had hired to supplement the talented staff of the attorney general's office.
Did Unspam have any obligation to hire attorneys to help defend the state's law? Absolutely not. We did so because we believe in the program. We believe in it not only because it holds the opportunity to generate revenue for our small business, but also because it is the right thing to do.
In other words, The Tribune's article should much more accurately have been titled, "Utah startup company donates thousands to state's legal defense."
The good news is that, so far, the state has triumphed. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball recently ruled that the pornography industry is "unlikely to succeed on the merits." While some work remains to be done, the state's talented legal team has helped ensure that you retain the right to control what material enters your home.
Most puzzling of all to me was the article's declaration that the law is a failure because it costs money to defend and enforce. While the article suggests Utah's law is about making money for the state, I believe the Legislature had something much simpler in mind: protecting children. We have the right, in our homes, to be free of material that we deem inappropriate for our families. My company, this law and this lawsuit are about protecting that right.
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* MATTHEW PRINCE is CEO of Unspam Technologies, Inc.
