Congress, in an effort to avoid solving any serious problems like Social Security or Tax Reform has latched onto "SPAM" as its next legislative victory. They are in the early stages of forming a new committee to look at the original CAN-SPAM 2003 law and see what modifications it requires since, in their enlightened opinion, it isn't working...really?
As someone that provides email marketing services to legitimate businesses I can safely report that the first version of the law has been totally successful at choking out a marketing channel to small businesses, increasing the marketing costs and legal hurdles while not even putting a minor dent into the real problem of spam. Sounds like just about every other "solution" that Congress puts in place to me.
I am thinking Congress should take a quiz before being allowed to modify this law the quiz would prove that they indeed know that the spam they are trying to stop doesn't come in little metal cans that contains some mystery meat. Turning over any technology solution to the idiots on Capitol Hill is like giving dynamite to your local street gang and hoping things work out OK.
The problem with spam is not a legislative problem, it is an economic problem. As any reasonably astute student of economics can tell you people will do what is in their own best interest including BREAKING THE LAW! Yes, I know this comes as a horrible shock to the intelligent ones on Capital Hill. The fact is because email is basically a "free" marketing tool, it will continue to be the tool of choice for scum sucking spammers that can't and won't carry their own weight in the marketing world.
Editorial Note: ISPs and IT Managers please note I am not implying there is no cost in providing and supporting email services. I am keenly aware of the costs associated with this, but "free" is a word that those in the non-technical fields understand when talking about email.
When I say "free" I simply mean unlike direct mail, TV and radio advertising, and other marketing channels that I am simply saying that the typical high costs associated with doing this type of marketing generally doesn't exist with email marketing. The point is if I can blast out 1,000,000 emails for virtually no cost, it pays if off if I receive a fraction of one percent as a return rate. Try that with 1,000,000 pieces of even the most cost effective direct mail campaign and you will probably have a pink slip or a very angry client by the end of the day.
Because it makes economic sense to break the law for spammers they will continue to do it and hope they don't get caught. Making the law even more stringent or adding in other commerce killing clauses will simply raise the cost of using this medium for legit businesses while again not making a dent in the real problem, remember brilliant ones on Capitol Hill, these people are already breaking the existing laws! What would possibly make them think if they make the laws more stringent that these clowns will see the light of day and quit spamming. Fat chance.
I had lunch the other day with a guy from a business that indicated his company was breaking the CAN-SPAM 2003 law. He explained that they gathered up email addresses from lots of public sources and would send an initial blast to this list. The message was from a real, legit, bricks and mortar business. The email address to reply to was real and the company's address and phone were clearly displayed on the message. If someone wanted to unsubscribe there was a link at the bottom to do so. Unfortunately for them because the list wasn't made up of individuals that indicated BEFORE the email was sent that wanted to receive the message they were law breakers and could be seriously fined for this.
Now to add one more element to this story you should know that over 8 jobs were created by doing this because it was the primary lead generation vehicle for the company. Some hard core web guys out there right now are no doubt screaming that it is still SPAM and that it costs money to deliver and maintain all the infrastructure to deliver those messages and they should all be locked up and have the key thrown away.
However I disagree. In my opinion they are a struggling small business and while yes, they are technically breaking the CAN-SPAM law they are taking great strides to insure that if you don't want the message you can get off the list immediately. They have clearly identified themselves so they are not hiding behind spoofed email addresses from servers located in Southeast Asia somewhere and they are trying very hard to offer a real product to the market.
Now assume just for the sake of argument that the entire list was also opt-in...wouldn't you still need the servers, IT personnel, and infrastructure to deliver this blast? Yes, you would and with this one minor change you have taken an email blast that was illegal and made it legal, but you did nothing to remove the stress such a blast puts on ISPs and IT Managers.
My point is that the law simply makes criminals out of legit businesses while not stopping the true spammer who hides his identity and goes to great length to skirt the law and does absolutely nothing to help victims stop this from happening again and again.
This company is simply trying to find a cost effective way to market their services and keep the people they have employed. Why we have this attitude about email that we apply to no other marketing medium is beyond me. You don't sue the post office because they deliver ads and direct mail packages you don't want do you? Do you think we need a law that says we all need to opt-in to some type of mail list before you can deliver mail to us, after all it does cause additional stress and resources on the postal system to deliver messages people don't want.
Solving spam is a complex problem, but ultimately it is a technology and economic problem and NOT a legislative problem. On a scale of 1-10 for technology awareness I would rate most of Congress with a -6 so I really don't want these morons spending more of my tax dollars trying to solve a problem that ultimately needs to be solved by the private sector with technology and the market place with economics.
The only thing a change to the law will do is make it harder and more expensive for a legit business to use this medium and give a few more lines of legislative crap for hard core spammers to ignore. If Congress wants to truly solve the problem then they simply need to keep their hands off the Internet and let private business solve this problem and the market solve this problem.
Michael Temple
