Spam Far From Canned

from the oh-well dept

The NY Times is adding to the pile of articles taking a look at the CAN SPAM law one year later and noticing that things haven't gotten much better. It includes all the usual quotes from all the usual suspects, passing the blame off on others. I still have problems with the law -- mainly with the fact that there was no metrics included to see if it was working and no backup plan put in place, which would have made a lot of sense. However, the argument that this has legalized spam no longer seems to be an issue. Recent studies show that compliance with CAN SPAM is nearly non-existent -- meaning that spammers simply don't care. Even if the law gives them an easy way to make their spam "legal," they're still ignoring that option, so the problem hasn't been nearly as big as many (including myself) expected. However, this may come down to the issue of enforcement, which has been the constant refrain from those who put the law in place originally.

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