Late last year, US states Michigan and Utah passed a law creating a Child Protection Registry protecting minors from receiving or viewing illegal products and services.

Illegal items include e.g. Tobacco, Alcohol, Gambling, Prescription Drugs, Illegal Drugs, Adult Content, Guns/Knives/Weapons, Lotteries, Sweepstakes ... well - you can continue at will.

All mailers - even if the mailing list constists only of adult opt-ins or active clients - have the problem now that they have to check the content of their mails against such a blacklist where parents specified their email as accessible by their kids as well

Michigan and Utah will be setting up registries that permit minors and parents to add their email address to a "Do Not Email" type list. Organizations who serve minors may register entire domains.

Businesses will be required to monthly submit their encrypted subscriber lists to Michigan and Utah who will give your list back minus anyone who appears on the registry... WOW... what a nice administrative task....

The ISIPP - the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy has copies of both laws reprinted on their website as well as links to relevant news articles.

They also have some teleseminars up about what businesses are affected, and how businesses should comply.

more at http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php
News Coverage:

Clickz
News.com
Forbes
Newstarget

Oh my god! can't the guys in government - instead of this overly administrative overkill - create a law that every person in the US must have a distinct mail account? if parents let their mail accessed by the kids, it's the same as leaving the Porn tape in the VCR when leaving to work... or?