In Los Angeles there is apparently still a law on the books that makes licking toads illegal, while in the city of Walnut, Calif., there is a law that reads "No man or boy shall dress as a girl or woman without a permit from the sheriff, except for the purpose of amusement, show or drama."

These laws probably came about much in the way that a bill sponsored by Texas Rep. Tom Moore of Waco in 1971 got passed. His bill commended Albert DeSalvo of Massachusetts "for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology."

The point Moore was trying to make was that his fellow lawmakers often didn't read or understand the bills and resolutions they signed. He made his point quite nicely because DeSalvo was more commonly known as The Boston Strangler, a serial killer responsible for the murders of 13 women between 1962 and 1964.

Last week I saw an interesting piece of legislation get passed by the House that I suspect was equally misunderstood by the lawmakers: This bill was the so-called Spy Act, which defines civil penalties of up to $3 million for spyware distributors.

The Spy Act was sponsored by Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), who, according to a story in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technology Review, sponsored the Spy Act after "she discovered spyware on her own computer."

Allow me a small digression here, but doesn't that seem a little strange? Given the myriad problems we face in our society that really need addressing, such as healthcare, pollution and crime, doesn't launching a legal jihad on spyware sort of imply that Bono has a surprising amount of time on her hands?

Anyway, the problem with the Spy Act is that it is going to be about as successful in reducing spyware as the CAN-SPAM Act has been in reducing spam, which is to say, hardly at all.

Behind this problem are three factors that would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for spyware legislation to do its intended job:

The first is that, despite the fancy wording in the act it doesn't cover all of the possibilities of how spyware can act and what it might do. This means that interpretations of the law's applicability will make it hard to get cases to court and even harder to get convictions.