Spam email messages have been one of the major curses when it comes to business online. Thousands of Canadian business professionals open their Microsoft Outlook mailbox in the morning and you find half of their mailboxes filled with spam messages. These messages may offer services that make no sense to the recipient, but what about those messages from legitimate businesses which are unwanted? We all get those.
In the last few years there have been at least a couple of Canadian private member's bills were introduced in Canadian Parliament with much anticipation but they failed in their efforts to curb the spammers in any sense. But now the Minister of Industry, Tony Clement is trying to make the situation better with his anti-spam Bill C-28. According to sources Bill C-28 is slated to come into effect around Christmas or the New Year. However there are many Canadian small business owners who fear facing stiff penalties for violating the regulations in the bill when passed.
According to Paul Poellhuber, the COO of ZeroSpam Security the bill is highly harmful for the small business owners as they are not aware of the regulations and even simple e-mails to the prospective clients may cost the companies huge fines. The fine for sending unwanted email messages can range from up to $1 million for individuals to $10 million for businesses. However, Poellhubber also felt “Bill C-28 is the first anti-spam law in Canada. Not a bad thing. Certainly a good thing, but it’s probably badly named because it’s not going to change much about the spam that you and I receive. But what it will change is the complete e-mail practices in Canada and those e-mailers mailing to Canada. Small businesses, we find, are not really aware of C-28. They are not aware that they will now require prior consent from the recipient before sending any commercial e-mail.”
Though the intention of anti-spam Bill-28 is to cut spam emails from your inbox but is that possible? First and foremost, the law is valid only within the borders of Canada and the fines will be imposed on Canadian individuals and business. However, all the top spammers and botnets in the world are not located within Canada. So will Minister Clements' bill make a real difference?
As you can see there aren’t much chances of spam messages being reduced in your mailbox but rather this bill will promote e-mail best practices within Canada.
Email marketing has been a favourite pasttime for many savvy marketers and Calgary social media consultants. Will these new rules coming into effect make a dent in the amount of spam you receive? Maybe, maybe not!
Comments
“Laws won’t stop spam” ? No, they won’t. What laws do is dissuade some people from undertaking shoddy mailing practices or even outright spam campaigns. Laws don’t stop murder, rape and robbery either, but for those un-dissuaded who undertake such heinous crimes, we, as a society, have laws for punitive effect. They pay the price society exacts for their actions. C-28 will attenuate spam in Canada, and help us to fight spam internationally.
I’d like to take a moment to dispel some rumours, and fear, uncertainty, and doubt (F.U.D.)
FUD #1: Canada is not a leading originator of spam.
False. There have been reports over the past six months that indicate that there are webhosting companies in this country that host command & control nodes of some of the most pernicious botnets in the world. Spamhaus, at the time of this writing, lists Canada as the eighth –worst country in the world in terms of SBL (Spamhaus BlockList) entries, with 212 of them. See for yourself here http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso
Abuse.ch, who track ZeuS, the largest phishing botnet, has an interactive map which clearly shows activity north of the 49th parallel https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/
Or perhaps Zerospam, despite being self-proclaimed ‘leading experts’ has forgotten about Montrealer Adam Guerbuez, http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2010/10/blast-from-past-adam-guerb... who recently was found liable for a second time, this time in Quebec court to having spammed millions of Facebook users illegally. He holds a redoubtable world’s record for the largest fine issued under the American CAN SPAM act, $873,000,000 USD. Facebook decided top pursue collections here in Canada. It is unfortunate that we didn’t have a similar provision in place to save them the bother of the initial case; C-28 would have allowed them to sue Guerbuez in Canada.
FUD #2: C-28 will have no impact on extra-jurisdictional criminal spammers
False. A careful reading of bills C-28 & C-29 show that they make long overdue provision for law enforcement in this country, including creating a Spam Reporting Centre, teams to work to investigate spam, and most importantly, the ability of Canadian LEA to share information with agencies in other countries, something they are ironically prevented from doing under the national privacy law, PIPEDA, at present time.
Furthermore, the law has a private right of action, allowing private citizens to launch their own cases against spammers.
FUD #4: Businesses will be negatively impacted.
False. Businesses, both big and small have been repeatedly and consistently consulted under the C-28 development process starting as far back as The Federal Task Force on Spam in 2005, wherein the Canadian Marketing Association and the Information Technology Association of Canada were deeply involved. Business concerns have testified to parliament, and their comments incorporated into the revision between C-28 and its predecessor, C-27.
The Federal privacy legislation, PIPEDA, has been in place for a decade dictates that Canada is an opt-in régime. If a company is emailing now and is legal, they will very likely be legal under C-28, with some possible minor clarifications to their sending practices, such as header veracity (the subject line and From: addresses should not be falsified) and including a proper unsubscribe mechanism (most companies do this, anyway). C-28 will require explicit consent from subscribers, but beyond that, some entirely reasonable provision for implied opt-in consent is allowable.
FUD#5 Companies are unaware of C-28
False. I can’t understand how that could be unless company marketers don’t read newspapers, are not on the Internet (and if they aren’t on the Internet how could they possibly be sending email?), or seen nor heard numerous TV and radio pieces devoted to the subject. I’ve personally been interviewed any number of times in this regard.
Perhaps there are still some businesses that have not been made aware of C-28, or if they are aware that there are some small changes, they may need to make to their practices.
CAUCE has addressed both these concerns, by partnering with ThinData, Return Path and the law office of Kris Klein to release a simple-to-understand C-28 compliance guide. Since October when it was released, the guide has had tremendous uptake, to thousands upon thousands of email sender clients of ThinData and Return Path. http://www.thindata.com/aboutus/resourcecenter/fisa/pdf/The_Marketers_Gu...
There is nothing sneaky, or underhanded nor difficult about C-28 compliance, but if a sender does have a particular need, the guide also provides ample pointers to additional resources including marketing and legal consulting services to help them ensure everything in order.
Lastly, once the law is passed, a series of regulations will be published in the Canada Gazette which will explain in specific detail how the law will be applied, and how it impacts esoteric issues such as address book uploads, or other emailing practices.
Clarity and transparency (in both official languages) has been a long-standing fundament of the entire C-28 development process, CAUCE would not have had it any other way. All stakeholders have been consulted at every step of the process, and beyond that, they were listened to, and changes made to satisfy everyone involved.
In all, a comprehensive anti-spam law is well over due in Canada, and Canadian Internet users all look forward to C-28 being passed as quickly as possible. F.U.D. not withstanding.
Neil Schwartzman
Executive Director
CAUCE
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, North America Inc.
http://cauce.org
http://twitter.com/cauce
Thank Neil for your comments and the points of clarification
Stuart Crawford
http://www.ulistic.com
Spam will never stop, maybe the email spam, but the Canada and the Calgary social media knows that spamming is just a bad way of saying marketing, or advertising. Our country lives off of marketing and advertising. Spam will never cease to be, or our economy would fail.
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