SOPA and PIPA update

There is quite a bit of vocal opposition to the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) making its way through the House of Representatives and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) making its way through the Senate. The opposition seems to have had an effect. I blogged about the bills late last year.
CNet reported today that the DNS provision was pulled from SOPA. This resolves one, but certainly not the only problem with SOPA. Also today, OpenCongress.org posted a letter from 6 co-sponsors of the Senate bill to Majority Leader Reid asking him to cancel the vote on PIPA.
Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to make their voice heard by their elected representatives.
 

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The dark side of email marketing

Everyone I talk to when dealing with issues inevitably has to tell me they are legitimate email marketers. They’re not spammers, they’re just business people. I often find it difficult to fathom why they need to tell me this. It’s not like email marketers are criminals or anything.
Two recent stories reminded me how evil some folks are. While I’ve not had any direct contact (that I know of) with any of the players on this end of things I have zero doubt that if they called me they would tell me that they were legitimate email marketers.
In one case, a members of a spam gang kidnapped the teenage daughter of someone investigating their activities. The gang held her for more than 5 years in horrific conditions. Yesterday Joseph Menn, author of “Fatal System Error” posted on Boing Boing that his friend got his daughter back. It is a heartbreaking story and incredibly sobering.
In another case, the Russian police arrested a man who ran spammit.com, a clearinghouse for viagra sellers to find spammers to send their mail. Reports say that mail volumes dropped by a fifth after the site was taken offline.
There is real evil in the email marketing industry. Sure, they’re spammers and we can all stand up and say they’re not legitimate. But, this is what the ISPs and Spamhaus and law enforcement are dealing with on a regular basis.

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The Constitutionality of SOPA

Lawrence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, says SOPA violates the first amendment.

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Canada passes anti-spam bill

Call it C-28, call it FISA, call it COPL, just don’t call it a pipe dream any longer.
Today the Canadian anti spam law received royal assent and is now law. ReturnPath is saying it will take effect September 2011, but that’s the only date I’ve seen published. The full text of the bill as passed by the House of Commons can be found at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/content/hoc/Bills/403/Government/C-28/C-28_3/C-28_3.PDF
It’s fairly dense and I’m still reading through the final version. Of critical importance for anyone marketing in Canada is that it sets requirements that commercial email be sent with the permission of the recipient. This is different from CAN SPAM here in the US which doesn’t require consent of the recipient, but allows anyone to send unsolicited email as long as it meets the standards set by the law.
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Return Path blog post
CAUCE posts
Thin Data implementation guide

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