Political insanity with email

In one of the more boneheaded email related moves I’ve seen from a political group ever the Obama / Biden campaign has announced that people can go to their website, enter in the email address of a Republican friend, pay some money, and the campaign will send an email to your (soon to be ex-) friend on your behalf.

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.
Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate. (Don’t worry—we won’t hold on to any of their information.) Obama for America

To quote a friend of mine: “WHAT THE … I DON’T EVEN”
This is going to cause massive delivery nightmares. Do you really think recipients of these emails are not going to hit “This is spam” or complain or block the sender? I have no doubt this list is going to be full of spamtraps and IPs are going to get listed on numerous blocklists and blocked by a bunch of ISPs. And then, THEN we’re going to get the complaints from Obama for America about how evil and anti-American the ISPs and spam filtering companies are for blocking their mail.
If I were a real conspiracy theorist, I’d say that, somehow, the blocking would be turned into Yet Another Law trying to regulate the Internet. It would be named something catchy that has a “meaningful” acronym. Like the “Barring Online Networks from Hindering Elected Americans Deploying Email Dialog” (BONEHEADED act). Or the “Open Access to Political Dialog” (OAPD act).
This is so not going to end well.

Email marketing OF THE FUTURE!
Put a fork in it

Related Posts

SOPA / PIPA

I’ve not mentioned anything about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it’s companion bill the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that are currently making their ways through Congress. Both bills put a lot of obligation on the ISPs to stop bad traffic on the Internet. Unfortunately, it seems no one writing the bill asked anyone with technical or operational experience for input. Many of the obligations are going to significantly impact ISP functioning and will probably degrade service for users.
The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group sent a letter to congress yesterday (PDF link), outlining the issues with SOPA and PIPA. I found it explained the bills and the flaws much better than many other summaries.

Read More

Click-wrap licenses again

Earlier this week ARS Technica reported on a ruling from the Missouri Court of Appeals stating that terms and conditions are enforceable even if the users are not forced to visit the T&C pages. Judge Rahmeyer, one of the panel members, did point out that the term in question, under what state laws the agreement would be enforced, was not an unreasonable request. She “do[es] not want [their] opinion to indicate that consumers assent to any buried term that a website may provide simply by using the website or clicking ‘I agree.'”
What does this have to do with email? Well, it means that reasonable terms in the agreements may still be binding even if the user does not read the full terms of the opt in before submitting an email address. In practical terms, though, there’s very little that has changed. Hiding grants of permission deep in a terms document has long been a sneaky trick practiced by spammers and list sellers. Legitimate companies already make terms clear so that users know what type of and how much mail to expect by signing up to a list. They also know that the legal technicalities of permission are not as important as meeting the recipients expectations.

Read More

White House sending spam?

There has been some press about political spam recently. People are receiving email from the White House that they have not opted into. At a recent press conference a reporter challenged the press secretary to defend the practice.
Chris Wheeler over at Bronto blog points out that CAN SPAM doesn’t apply as this is political mail, and CAN SPAM only covers commercial email. He also notes that most of the mail came from “forward to a friend” links which the sender has little to no control over.
Gawker has a post up “Everything you need to know about Obama’s Spam-Gate.”
There are a lot of issues here. Chris asks a number of questions on his blog, that I encourage people to think about.

Read More