Two consumer news stories last week on the recent rise in spam didn’t try to blame the problem on the Can Spam Act and mainstream marketing.
What the heck happened?
Usually, ca-ca-for-brains consumer reporters—yeah, yeah, ca-ca-for-brains reporter is redundant—include lines in their stories saying something like: “Since the Can Spam Act of 2003 was passed, the amount of unsolicited e-mail on the Internet has skyrocketed” as if U.S. law somehow affects spam coming out of Russia and Nigeria, or that somehow people who are already breaking 49 laws wouldn’t break another law if it were only written differently.
However, an article last week by New York Times reporter Brad Stone put the blame for a supposed massive recent increase in spam right where it belongs: on illegal spammers hijacking unsuspecting people’s computers.
“Secure Computing, an anti-spam company in San Jose, CA, reports that 250,000 new computers are captured and added to these spam ‘botnets’ each day,” said Stone’s article. “The sudden appearance of new sources of spam makes it more difficult for companies to rely on blacklists of known junk e-mail distributors. Also, by using other people’s computers to scatter their e-mail across the Internet, spammers vastly increase the number of messages they can send out, without having to pay for the data traffic they generate.”
On the same day, the Washington Times published a piece that explicitly said what this publication has contended all along: that Can Spam gives U.S. law enforcement officials the necessary tools to prosecute the spammers they can find.
“The challenge of enforcement does not stem from a lack of teeth,” said the article by Kara Rowland. “Can-Spam allows the [Federal Trade Commission] to seek civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation, plus further fines for spammers who unlawfully ‘harvest’ or extract e-mail addresses from Web sites or Web services. The law also gives the Justice Department authority to seek criminal punishment for violators who falsify header information or hijack a computer to send e-mail without a user’s consent.
“So far, the FTC has filed 26 lawsuits for violations of the act, Mr. [FTC lawyer Michael] Davis said. In those cases, federal courts have awarded civil penalties totaling more than $10 million,” said the Washington Times piece.
Gasp! Getting … the … vapors. Falling … into … a … dead … faint.
How the heck did these two reporters pass through their job interviews? Don’t consumer newspapers test potential editorial hires to ensure they have no ability to reason through business issues? Where’s the obligatory paragraph blaming spam on mainstream marketing?
OK, Kara and Brad, if you ever hope to be accepted into the International Order of Ca-Ca-for-Brains Consumer Reporters, you had better get a few things straight.
First, the spam problem is all mainstream U.S. marketing and the federal Can Spam Act’s fault. The Can Spam Act should have been written requiring commercial e-mailers to get explicit, written, verified permission from recipients. It should also have given every hair-brained, knee-jerk, anti-marketing consumer the right to sue for even good-faith violations.
If you truly had the makings of ca-ca-for-brains consumer reporters, Kara and Brad, you’d realize that only a law forcing American merchants into a bureaucratic record-keeping nightmare would have the magical spillover effect necessary to stop spam from Russia and Nigeria.
Hopefully, you’ll both learn to be more like so many of your colleagues and refrain from filing such well-reasoned stories from now on.
