*NEWS*CALIF:AN OPEN RANGE FOR JUNK FAXES

[Anonymous]

Still an open range for junk faxes in California
California forced to defend ‘junk fax’ law
California
fax machine owners tired of watching junk faxes eat up their toner
cartridges and paper will have to wait a little longer for relief.A law
designed to ban marketers from sending unsolicited faxes was set to
take effect in California on Jan. 1, 2006, but SB 833 is being held up
in court after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a legal challenge.
In
a joint effort with fax company Xpedite Systems, the Chamber of
Commerce filed a lawsuit in Sacramento federal court and on Wednesday
won an injunction that will stay the law at least until Jan. 31, 2006.
A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 23.
At issue is California’s
decision to write a tougher law than the Junk Fax Prevention Act passed
by the U.S. Congress last summer. The federal law allows companies to
send faxes to people or businesses they have had prior business
dealings with, but the California law doesn’t.
Even “if you’ve been
doing business with someone for years, then you have to take on some
significant costs to comply with (the California) law,” said Amar
Sarwal, general litigation counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a
nonprofit business advocacy group. “We think this will make it hard on
small- and middle-size business and maybe some larger ones.”
Ironically,
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was among the biggest backers of the
federal anti-junk-fax law. In recent years, the U.S. government has
tried to respond to the nation’s fax machine owners, who have blamed
higher paper and ink costs on the blizzard of junk faxes they receive.
State
Senator Debra Bowen, a Democrat, says the federal law doesn’t go far
enough to protect fax machine owners. Allowing marketers an exemption
just because they say they had a prior relationship with someone is no
good unless they can prove it, she asserts.
“In the federal law,
there is no requirement for anyone to demonstrate that a prior business
relationship existed,” Bowen said. “Anyone could say, ‘I had a business
dealing with someone way back when,’ and we’d have to take them at
their word.”
Both California and federal laws allow recipients of
illegal faxes to sue the sender. If a court finds that a sender
willfully or knowingly violated the law, it can award a recipient up to
$1,500 per violation.
Bowen said she’s confident that California is
on sound legal footing and that Americans from across the country would
support such a law.
“I’ve received zero calls from anyone demanding their constitutional right to receive more junk faxes,” she said.

[Author]

December 29, 2005 at 9:53 AM