Bad Spam, Good Spam: ‘Can Spam’ Changes the Nature of How We Perceive Spam

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Bad Spam, Good Spam: ‘Can Spam’ Changes the Nature of How We Perceive Spam

2/9/2005

By Terry Calhoun

Did you think that the Can Spam Act was supposed to cut down on the amount of spam we get? Well, it hasn’t . . . and it won’t. Of course, we have seen a relatively few instances of a really virulent spammer or two going to jail, pending appeals. But as a professional association executive who is responsible for a lot of e-mails getting sent out each week, I recently had my eyes opened about the true intent of the Can Spam Act.

You’ve probably heard this before, I had, but I had not consciously connected with its real meaning until the last half-year: The primary intent of the Can Spam Act was to legitimize bulk commercial entities by those who market goods and services for ‘mainstream’ companies. All those times that some of us argued, “Well, yeah, but the really bad spammers will just go offshore,” were heard, but we didn’t matter, because that was ancillary to the bill’s purpose.

As I write this with a sort of negative slant, I feel the same kind of tension that I feel when the Bush Administration d'es another one of its economic dance steps which widen the gap between rich and poor. Even though I oppose most Bush Administration economic policies, my household income is high enough that we end up on the side that actually benefits most of the time. That creates some tension for me.

The same holds true with regard to the Can Spam Act. In my primary ‘day job’ working for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), we actually end up in the position of being able to send more mass e-mails to more people than we ever dared to do before, thanks to the Can Spam Act. Yet at the same time, spam makes up more than 80 percent of the 1,000+ messages I receive each day.

How I Came to Understand the True Impact on the Can Spam Act on My Work

Implementation of the act has been delayed for nonprofit and other associations until Feb. 28, 2005. All of us in the ‘association world’ have been involved in a series of ‘waves” of emotion as one deadline after another passed and we waited to hear whether or not the special relationship between our organizations and those who are our members would gain a special place in the set of rules about who and who can’t or can send ‘commercial’ e-mail to whom.

When the final rules came down in December, we initially thought we’d lost. It was determined that we have to follow the same rules as anyone else, even with our own members, so the professional association of professional association staffers – the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) scheduled what is now its best-ever-attended audiocast – about what we need to know to go forth with sending e-mail messages to members, constituents, and others.

To our surprise (Well, it wasn’t completely a surprise to me, I had been reading up on it and thought that we would get this outcome, but it was nice to have my understanding confirmed.), it became evident that while there are a few parts of Can Spam that impose a burden on us, by and large it gives us permission to send more things to more people.

What’s the negative part for a professional association? (And maybe for an alumni association!) Well, the orneriest rule is that if someone, even a member who pays dues, responds to a ‘commercial’ e-mail message and asks to be removed from our lists, then we must– we can’t even give her or him an option–make sure that any published membership directories (print or electronic) do not have his or her e-mail address in them. I find that a bit strange, but it is one rule that was clearly confirmed in the audiocast.