The District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) is poised to get a brand new anti-spam law of their very own.

Many people don’t realize that Washington D.C., while a “district”, is not, in fact, a state. It is the capital city of the United States, and there have been movements to make D.C. a state, the last one as recently as 1993 when a Congressional vote shot down D.C.’s bid for statehood, but at present it is not a state.

Nor, however, is it synonymous with “the United States”, having a fairly autonomous political structure, including a D.C. council. So for those of you who read the headline and thought “Huh? Don’t we already have CAN-SPAM?”, consider this your civics lesson for the week. This is about a law for D.C. itself, just like Ohio just passed their own state anti-spam law, and like Georgia is poised to vote on their own law.

In any event, D.C. councilman David Catania has introduced a bill to the D.C. council which would make illegal sending spam to a citizen of Washington D.C., or for spam to be sent from a computer system located in D.C..

It has all of the usual prohibitions against email with spoofed headers, and no working opt-out, but it also has a couple of unique clauses. These include… [Continued...]