LANSING, MI – Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox announced Thursday that he has filed criminal charges against two companies for sending unsolicited email to addresses registered with the State of Michigan in the Protect MI Child Registry, in violation of the Michigan’s Child Protection Registry Act (CPRA).According to a statement issued Thursday by the Michigan Attorney General’s office, the messages in question sought to “lure children to gamble and buy alcoholic beverages.”

Although the companies charged with violating the Act apparently were advertising alcoholic beverages and/or gambling, Cox focused his comments on other manner of “harmful materials” that form the Act’s true raison d’être.

“The Internet – especially email and instant messaging – is a favorite vehicle for spammers and sexual predators to solicit children to buy harmful products, view pornographic images, and, worst of all, become targets of predatory activity,” Cox said. “I will continue to utilize all the tools available under the law to protect Michigan children from these menaces.”

Under the Act, the Michigan legislature created the “Protect MI Child Registry” so that parents, teachers and other third parties could submit “e-mail addresses, instant message addresses, and other electronic contact points to which children in Michigan have access” to the Michigan Public Service Commission, which administers the child-protective registry.

Under the Act, it is illegal to send email to addresses on the registry if the content of the email “advertises anything a minor is prohibited from doing, viewing, or using,” to use the terms of Cox’s press release. The law requires senders such types of email to “electronically scrub” their own mailing lists against the registry, “eliminating the registered e-mail addresses from mailing lists” to quote again from AG Cox’s press release.

Tom Hymes, Communications Director for the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), said the FSC is examining the situation and may challenge the Act in court. The FSC is currently challenging a similar registry/law in Utah, a law with which the Michigan statute “has more similarities than differences,” Hymes said.

According to Hymes, FSC’s litigators have been preparing for a possible challenge to the law all along, but no decision has been reached yet.

“The logistics of filing are being considered now,” Hymes said, noting that the cost of litigation was one factor that had to be weighed carefully, especially given the other legal battles the FSC is currently embroiled in.

The companies charged with violating the CPRA are RR Media, Inc. of Cathedral City, CA, and Data Stream Group, Inc. of Bonita Springs, FL. The charges could result in a fine of up to $10,000 and “other penalties,” according to the Michigan Attorney General’s press release.

Those “other penalties” include civil actions already filed by Cox in Ingham County Circuit Court. According to Cox, these “companion cases” were filed to “seek injunctions against further violations and other statutory penalties.”

The FSC isn’t the only group that has voiced opposition to such laws. In December of 2005, the Federal Trade Commission, trying to dissuade other State legislatures from following Utah’s lead, said that such registries present “serious security and privacy risks.”

“It’s rare that we find ourselves in agreement with the federal government,” FSC chairman Jeffrey Douglas said at the time, “but in this instance, we’re seeing things eye-to-eye.”