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New Opt-Out Clause Makes CAN-SPAM Worse
snydeq writes "Three years of mulling, and the FTC has made the CAN-SPAM Act worse, writes Gripe Line's Ed Foster. Chief among the offenses in the FTC's updated rules is an even worse approach to opt-out procedures. In the future, in scenarios where multiple marketers use a single email message to spam you, 'only one of the senders — the one in the From: field — need be designated the official sender who is responsible for honoring opt-outs,' Foster writes. Translation? 'Other "marketers" who used that spam message, not to mention the spamming service that actually provided the email address list, don't need to honor opt-outs. So try as you might to get yourself off a list, the real spammer can just keep changing the designated sender in the From: field and legally keep on spamming you.' The irony of the CAN-SPAM moniker gets thicker."
This is why established industries LOVE regulations! Once you have procedures in place to "follow" the regulation. Then the regulation becomes barrier to entry, or even a legal minefield, to those coming after.
In this case unsolicited bulk email would be illegal if you didn't follow all these rules up front. But for the guys that already got the grace period to follow the law it's been twisted just enough to be meaningless!!!
Power, telco, FCC, FAA, FDA, etc all those rule making agencies are run like this. It's just funny to see something so simple twisted so quickly. This is the same reason nobody wants internet neutrality put into law. Then any exceptions to blocking become "rules" that they "have" to block other content/providers... The telcos are already writing the rules the way they want with lots of backwards worded loopholes.
Other "marketers" who used that spam message, not to mention the spamming service that actually provided the email address list, don't need to honor opt-outs
Damn! I guess this means an end to the three wonderful years of relief we've all enjoyed from spam thanks to the oh-so-effective initial rules.
Seriously, this change really doesn't matter, except it will let the FTC claim success due to a massive drop in the number of "valid" complaints against spammers. Whining that it weakens the existing law strikes me as similar to complaining that a serial killer violated a restraining order.
It seems that they managed to take a completely toothless act, and make it even less helpful.
I guess it is no wonder that congress has managed to somehow attain an even lower approval rating than our current commander-in-chief, seeing as they managed to squirt out something like this instead of dealing with important national issues.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Anybody who makes a sufficiently large contribution to their campaign, apparently.