It is unusual to find us in support of new federal regulations, but in the case of the CAN SPAM Act on its way through Congress there is ample reason to support intervention by the federal government. That’s because federal regulation on this topic will head off what has become a thicket of state laws that threaten to inhibit interstate commerce. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution vests the power to regulate interstate commerce firmly in the hands of Congress. The goal was to create an open national market, and the creation of that common market has been the key to America’s growing into the economic behemoth that it is. Since most spam — unsolicited e-mail advertisements — crosses state lines, it can be regulated only by Congress. There may not be any good reason to try to regulate spam, but since 37 states have stepped in to do so with their own laws, it was up to Congress to step in and sort out the mess.

The most troubling spam law is on its way from California, and it is set to take effect on January 1, 2004. California’s statute would require marketers to get permission before sending commercial email, and it would give individuals the right to sue violators. This means, however, that e-mailers in New York or Maine or Montana could fall afoul of the law and be subject to its penalties, including fines of $1,000 for each message. The problem is that there is usually no way to know, as an e-mail sender, whether bobsmith@anything.com is a California resident, an Irishman, or a robot. It may not have been the exact problem on James Madison’s mind that summer in Philadelphia, but it’s the kind of problem the Constitution was designed to solve.

The bill before Congress and set to be signed by the president before Thanksgiving sounds mostly reasonable. It supercedes all of the state laws. In their place, it places a prohibition on spammers forging e-mail “from” lines. It also bans spammers from hacking into others’ computers and using them to send spam. Both of these are common practices. The bill does require commercial e-mailers to include a physical postal address in their e-mails, which, with smaller operations, could mean a home address. On the whole, though, Congress is for once stepping in only when absolutely necessary and making as few waves as possible in an effort to protect interstate commerce.