Terry wants our take on Canada’s new anti-spam law
Perhaps you could take a look at and comment on Canada’s new anti-spam law – I haven’t but I do know that everyone you have already given permission to send you things by email now have to email you for permission to do so; I am not sure at all that this will stop the idiots – i.e. I still get emails from some insurance place that I have marked as “junk”!!! High fines but who oh who is policing it all.
Our answer
Hi Terry. Our response to it after reading the law is “yawn”. It’s another one of the stupid laws that will do no good because the misanthropes who are spammers will continue to send spam and continue “business as usual”. Why? Because most spammers are either located in countries who have no laws regarding spam, operate from off-shore locations, or go to great lengths to hide the origin of the spam. These spammers couldn’t care less what Canadian law is, just like they could care less about the American spam laws.
Canada’s new law is draconian and it will hurt legitimate businesses while the real villains go on sending spam. We can see it now — some Canadian citizen will get angry with his/her insurance company, pharmacy, store, etc. (anyone who sends commercial email) and turn them in as spammers. The Canadian law is vague and nebulous — according to what we have learned, if a company has a previous, established relationship with a recipient the spam law does not apply. But we are not lawyers and we don’t know the ins and outs of the new Canadian spam law — but we know enough about human nature to know the spammers are yawning and getting up and ready for another day of sending millions of spam to people all over the world including Canada.
It won’t stop spam, but it will cost money, and from what we hear, Canadian taxes are already high enough. This is going to end up being an ill-thought-out, governmental morass, costing tons of money to enforce while having a negligible affect on spam and spammers.
Our newsletter is double opt-in, which means every subscriber who signs up has to give us permission to send them email — and they have to click a link confirming it before we can send them email. So we have permission to send email to every subscriber. So, regardless of Canada’s anti-spam law, we’re in good shape.
After reading about the new Canadian anti-spam law, we wondered if perhaps your government is learning the bad habits of the American government of wasting money by passing unenforceable laws.
If anyone is interested in learning more about Canada’s new attempt to stop spam, the following article explains it well:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/07/09/us-institutions-may-run-afoul-new-canadian-anti-spam-law#sthash.cMUx9NSZ.dpbs
Anti-spam laws are a huge joke, just like do-not-call list. We are inundated with “opt-out” options on things we were never offered an “opt-in” choice. And in many situations we aren’t given either choice. Personal choice and personal privacy don’t exist for you and me. We, the individuals, need to “incorporate”.
Its such as you read my thoughts! You seem to grasp a lot about this, such as you wrote the e-book in
it or something. I believe that you simply can do with some
% to drive the message house a little bit, but instead of that, this is excellent blog. An excellent read. I’ll definitely be back.