From an article in the New York Times by Saul Hansell (via CNET): "...Gov. Gray Davis of California signed a bill Tuesday that outlaws sending most commercial e-mail to or from the state [of California] that the recipient did not explicitly request. That is a far more wide-reaching law than any of the 35 other state laws meant to regulate spam or any of the proposed bills in Congress. 'We are saying that unsolicited e-mail cannot be sent and there are no loopholes,' said Kevin Murray, the Democratic state senator from Los Angeles who sponsored the bill... The law will take effect Jan. 1, 2004..."