Stupid Patent Watch: Unspam Going Global?

Unspam—remember them?—announced recently it has been awarded a patent on its kids’ do-not-e-mail registry technology.

Yay. Clap, clap, clap. A technology that forcibly leeches cash from law-abiding marketers while providing absolutely nothing of value to anyone has a patent.

But get this: The company’s founder, Matthew Prince, is signaling he plans to take his scheme outside the U.S.

Those familiar with Unspam’s parasitic business model can skip the next three paragraphs.

For those who could use some background, Utah and Michigan in 2005 passed laws allowing 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 registered addresses in those states.

Unspam lobbied for the laws. Unspam got the contracts to maintain the registries.

As a result, companies that send e-mail containing adult-oriented material—like wine-of-the-month-club newsletters—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. Unspam gets a cut of the business.

The company lobbied to have similar laws passed in at least five other states—Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa and Wisconsin—and mercifully failed.

All the while though, Unspam was gunning for a patent. The plan seemed simple. Get as many state legislatures as possible to pass child-no-e-mail laws. Then, even if Unspam didn’t win the contracts to maintain the resulting registries, whoever did get the work would presumably have to pay Unspam licensing fees.

Fortunately, due at least in part to the tireless lobbying efforts of Trevor Hughes and the E-mail Sender and Provider Coalition, those states’ legislators saw reason and backed off.

Good thing. Utah and Michigan’s registries protect children from nothing. Only law-abiding marketers use them. Meanwhile, the Internet’s sewer dwellers continue happily spamming away, polluting people’s inboxes and spam folders with subject lines such as: “Supersize your manhood today.”

Moreover, the Federal Trade Commission in 2005 concluded that child do-not-e-mail registries may give Internet predators a means to contact kids on the lists.

That Unspam continues claiming to parents that it can protect their children from offensive material with these registries is unconscionable.

However, it appears the company isn’t done attempting to foist its parasitic business model on law-abiding marketers, or at least its founder thinks it isn’t.

In a release announcing Unspam’s patent, Prince stated: “Unspam’s patented technology keeps the addresses protected by do-not-contact list laws safe from being revealed while ensuring those companies required to comply with the law have their legal rights and their customers’ privacy protected. We look forward to working with governments worldwide who are interested in offering their citizens a safe and effective way to keep unwanted electronic messages out of their homes.”

Did you catch that? He looks forward to working with governments worldwide.

Having failed to roll his scheme out across the United States, and after accomplishing nothing more than being a nuisance in the two states where he was successful in getting child-no-e-mail laws enacted, Prince apparently wants to try and dupe legislators in other countries into creating child no-e-mail registries.

Think about the opportunities.

China could enact a no-e-mail law under which all its citizens would be required to register their e-mail addresses to be screened from anything authorities don’t want them to read. The country’s political dissidents could then be forced to pay a fee to have the government suppress their messages to everyone on their lists.

Or how about this: Cuba could enact a law that would require anybody who sells anything to scrub their lists against a registry of the country’s five computer owners.

Hey, it’s not any more ridiculous than what’s already in place in Michigan and Utah.

If Unspam were in the private sector, the Federal Trade Commission would have gone after it long ago for making false claims about its ability to protect children from offensive material.

With government support, though, the next dupe is just an international border away.