Federal Task Force on Spam Final Report Submitted to Government
Board participation was as follows:
Consumer Awareness and Education - Genevieve Reed (also a Task Force member)
Technology & Network Management - Chris Lewis, John Levine, der Mouse
Law and enforcement - Chris Lewis, John Levine
Email Authentication - Lynda Partner, Sylvain Carle
Also, Board member Bernard Brun attended the Task Force's public Spam Roundtable held in Ottawa in December 2004.
The work paid huge dividends. CAUCE Canada readily signed off on the report and its constituent parts, including
- Recommended Best Practices for Internet Service Providers and Other Network Operators
- Recommended Best Practices for Email Marketing
- Three Key Tips for Combatting Spam
As Task Force member Michael Geist noted: "The report called on the government to introduce tough anti-spam legislation backed by significant new financial penalties."
Minister Emerson welcomed the report; both the politicians and Industry Canada worked very hard to develop the recommended laws until the government fell in November. We hope the work will be renewed with equal vigor after the coming Federal elections.
Geist went on to predict "With spam and spyware an ongoing problem, the new government will introduce anti-spam legislation in the spring.Look for potential repeat of the do-not-call embarrassment as lobbyists move in quickly to water down the tough measures found in the bill."
A link to the report can be found on the Task Force public education sites at http://StopSpamHere.ca and http://Arretezlepourrielici.ca/
CAUCE offers advice on Katrina relief donations
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a web page listing reputable organizations accepting donations. We encourage you to check their list before donating to a charity that you're not already familiar with.
CAN SPAM at least doesn't prevent mail filtering
White Buffalo Ventures is a Texas company that sets up online dating sites. In early 2003, they had the clever idea to make a public information request to the University of Texas for all of their e-mail addresses, which the univerisity duly answered, and then to start spamming all those addresses. The university asked White Buffalo to stop, which they didn't, then started filtering them. White Buffalo sued, on the theory that the filtering was illegal under the First Amendment, since UT is part of the state government, as well as under the CAN SPAM act.
After percolating through the courts, the Fifth Circuit published its decision that UT can indeed filter out the spam. UT acts as an ISP for its students, and CAN SPAM specifically says ISPs are allowed to implement whatever spam filters they want. The court further decided that in view of the Central Hudson case, the most important Supreme Court decision about the first amendment and commercial speech, that UT's filtering doesn't violate the First Amendment.
FTC issues report on spam tagging
The act required that they look at spam tagging with ADV: or a similar subject line tag. They conclude that tagging would not be effective, mostly because spammers who are breaking the law anyway are unlikely to add tags merely because another law says they have to. They also looked at 20 state laws and national laws in Europe, Korea, and Japan that mandate tags, none of which have been at all effective. The report is well written and is worth a read by anyone interested in the way that spam policy is made.
CAUCE offers advice on Tsunami relief donations
Rather than responding to spam, CAUCE encourages its members and friends to contribute to any of these well-established organizations that have Tsunami relief projects active in Asia:
