States to
Consider Flurry of Internet Bills
January 4, 2000
NYTIMES ©
By JERI CLAUSING
Attorneys General Examine Their Role
in Internet Regulation
WASHINGTON -- As state legislators
return to work in the coming weeks, many of the Internet
policy debates that have been playing out in Congress
will begin echoing in the halls of capitols across the
country. By the middle of January, 36 state legislatures
will have begun their regular legislative sessions. A
total of 44 states are scheduled to convene during 2000,
according to the National Conference of
State Legislatures. During those sessions, the Internet
Alliance predicts that there will be more than 2,000
Internet-related bills that will result in a flurry of
policy making at the state level.
"This will be the big story of
the Year 2000," said Jeff Richards, executive
director of the Internet Alliance, a trade association
based in Washington.
Many of the debates will mirror those
that have been going on in Congress for the last year.
"But at the state level, they tend to move much
faster," Richards said.
Preliminary indications from Internet
Alliance offices around the country are that the top
three Internet issues in state legislatures will be
privacy, Internet sales and access taxes and content
issues like unsolicited commercial e-mail.
And while lawmakers have matured
greatly in their understanding of the new medium and its
unique challenges for policy makers, Richards said the
industry could still expect to see a number of bad laws.
"Legislators are clearly more
thoughtful about the Internet. Their parents, their
children and themselves are now using the Internet far
more than ever before. They now have constituents who
are Internet companies and the Internet is becoming a
part of everyday life," Richards said. "That
same familiarity, however, brings about a tendency to
legislate."
"There will be some terrible laws
that will be made -- some laws that are far ahead of
their time or don't incorporate reality in the sense
that they are meaningless or totally
unenforceable."
But there are also some laws that the
Internet Alliance, one of the original Internet trade
associations that is now owned by The
Direct Marketing Association, will be pushing for on
behalf of its member companies.
Emily Hackett, state policy director
at the Internet Alliance, says her group will be pushing
for the adoption of bills to establish uniform rules to
give electronic contracts and signatures the legal
weight of their ink and paper counterparts.
Hackett said her group would also be
lobbying for legislation to curb unsolicited commercial
e-mail, commonly referred to as spam, by outlawing
fraudulent headers in e-mail messages and the tools used
to create them.
"About 14 states have already
passed good spam legislation," Hackett said.
"We'll see that continue," she said.
On the privacy front, however, the
Internet Alliance will continue to promote industry
self-regulation.
When it comes to Internet taxes,
Richards said many states would be discussing how to
protect their tax bases from electronic commerce.
Although a federal three-year moratorium currently is in
place barring states from adopting new Internet use or
access taxes, Richards said many states would pass laws
to take effect when that ban expires next year.
Some states also will be looking at
laws to increase the collection of sales taxes on
Internet sales, like laws requiring that state income
tax forms be changed to include a section for residents
to claim and voluntarily pay levies on their Internet
purchases.
Another favorite issue for lawmakers
at both the state and federal level is Internet content,
specifically attempts to limit access to adult sites.
"We think that if the spam bill is implemented,
that will take care of a lot of the content
issues," Hackett said, referring to the fact that a
lot of unsolicited e-mail promotes adult Web sites and
products.
Still, Richards said Internet content
in general would continue to be a tricky issue for
policy makers, even though the Supreme Court has struck
down past attempts by federal and state lawmakers to
regulate Web sites. "State legislatures often feel
they want to challenge federal lawmakers on
constitutional issues," Richards said. "So if
there is a place in America where the content issue is
debated, it tends to be in the states. They want to push
the envelope."
Because of that, one of the Internet
Alliance's priorities, Hackett and Richards said, will
be to educate state lawmakers about the need to proceed
with caution when it comes to regulating the Net.
Richards said law officers need to
first look to apply traditional laws to the Internet
rather than hastily passing new ones that cannot be
enforced on a global network.
"We think enforcement of current
laws is always a first priority," Richards said.
"When you do that, two things happen: No. 1, You
don't veer off into hasty lawmaking. No. 2, we are
honest with ourselves and legislate with the idea of
enforcement in mind."
Attorneys General Examine Their
Role in Internet Regulation
On a related note, the changing role
of the state attorneys general in the age of the
borderless Internet will be the focus of a three-day
conference being held by the National
Association of Attorneys General in Palo Alto,
Calif., next week.
"This is considered a major
deal," said James Tierney, a former attorney
general in Maine who now works as a consultant on issues
affecting state attorneys general.
"It is going to be very well
attended by attorneys general who, in all honesty, are
searching to find out the appropriate level of state
involvement in the new economy."
The big question, Tierney said, is:
"Will the traditional attorneys general role, that
of consumer protection, survive? Will there be a place
for them in this world where millions are making
transactions across state borders."
Tierney says he thinks the answer will
be a resounding yes.
"I think there is a pretty firm
commitment by them to maintain an involvement" both
in criminal law enforcement and civil protections for
consumers, Tierney said.
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