I appreciate all the attention this article has gotten. As several posters have pointed out,
the attorney general's email practice isn't considered spam under CAN-SPAM because it's political speech, not commercial. But recipients don't care if senders are obeying the letter of the law--if we don't want it, it's spam.
Fact is, just obeying the law won't keep a sender out of trouble. For example, a sender has up to ten days to remove someone from their list, which may as well be ten years in Internet time.
The free speech argument only gets you so far. Sure, political speech should be protected, but that doesn't give a politician the right to barge into my living room and start giving a speech. People consider their email inboxes to be like their living rooms--you may be welcome, but you need to be invited first.
Ultimately, no law or anti-spam program will be able to determine what's spam with 100% accuracy. I would be happy if the law could help prosecute those who are perpetuating obvious fraud.
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Fact is, just obeying the law won't keep a sender out of trouble. For example, a sender has up to ten days to remove someone from their list, which may as well be ten years in Internet time.
The free speech argument only gets you so far. Sure, political speech should be protected, but that doesn't give a politician the right to barge into my living room and start giving a speech. People consider their email inboxes to be like their living rooms--you may be welcome, but you need to be invited first.
Ultimately, no law or anti-spam program will be able to determine what's spam with 100% accuracy. I would be happy if the law could help prosecute those who are perpetuating obvious fraud.