Over the last several years, a number of spam bills have been introduced – and ultimately failed – to bring anti-spam laws to Canada but now the “Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act” (FISA) scheduled for reading and debate, may actually signal an end to the dearth with the passage of Bill C-28 likely before the end of the year.

Most small businesses are not even aware of the existence of a Bill C-28, so when it passes into law, they may find even simple e-mails to prospective customers could cost them in big fines (up to $1 million for individuals and up to $10 million for businesses). Bill C-28 will require consent before commercial e-mail can be sent to an address.

While it certainly isn't my prerogative to dissect or critique this finely crafted piece of legislation, I will point out the significant highlight of Bill c-28:

Section 7 starts with: It is prohibited to send or cause or permit to be sent to an electronic address a commercial electronic message unless... and it goes downhill from there.

As proposed, this bill will ensure that Canada does not continue as one of the few remaining countries in the western hemisphere without a spam law, but will require an opt-in provision that other western countries rejected. At the same time, it will ensure job security in a number of misaligned and antiquated government bureaucracies like the CRTC. Bill C-28 could possibly provide a much needed boost to government coffers in these economically trying times.

The American equivalent “CAN-SPAM Act initially included a “opt in” provision which was modified after debate to the “opt-out” provision. The European model has a similar provision to opt-out of receiving further emails. Lets hope Canadian politicians arrive at this same conclusion.

Opt-out isn't perfect

A business is required to remove your email address from their mail list when requested to do so. While technically this method in principle should work to reduce unwanted email, as an unfortunate consequence of the press received by unethical businesses, many people are just unwilling to respond to an unwanted email with the required opt-out method. People have a legitimate fear of email address harvesting, without starting to confirm to the “spammers” that there is not only a functional email address, but also someone who is actually reading the email.

Alternatively, some email providers eg: gmail, hotmail, now have included mechanism for reporting spam with a touch of a button. Spam reports are then utilized by spam filter providers to exclude mail from even reaching the inbox. As well, the ip address of the sender can be “blacklisted”. While this form of policing does have advantages especially for fine tuning of spam filters , many webhosts have incured innumerable hours working to have an ip addresses removed from “blacklist” after emails that met the requirements under spam laws, were inadvertently (maybe not) reported as spam. There have also been some resourceful companies that have sprung up that maintain “blacklists” of suspected spam sending ip's” that then require a “fee” to have the offending ip removed.

Ten years too late

Prior to the technology catching up to the enterprising entrepreneurs, there was indeed a need for this type of legislation. Canada was known as a haven for many spammers to openly tout their wares. Times have changed as have the methods. Today, spam is much more likely to originate in Asia, India, and Eastern Europe, and to be sent from compromised computers using spambot networks.

Comment spam on websites has also become a much larger issue than email spam, although this also will fade fast as the technology catches up. Bill C-28 will do nothing to alleviate these concerns.

Some could (and would) argue that the legislation looks to protect Canadians from expending valuable resources dealing daily with the cost of email spam. While a valid point, governments have traditionly been regarded as a drain on resources rather than the cure. It will provide valuable tools for law enforcement to perform its job. More disappointment.

Canada Post... delivering junk mail everywhere

What Bill C-28 may actually achieve is Canada Post (a crown corporation), having a monopoly on delivering junk mail. There is no opt in mechanism for the postal service. The advent of paperless billing and Internet payments along with their own ineptness has left many postal services struggling to find relevancy in this modern age.

Staying legal

Some commentators are proposing a number of recommendations to follow that will keep a businesses legal before the bill becomes law in Canada:

- Outsource your direct e-mail marketing efforts to a reputable e-mail sending service.

- Clean up your mailing lists.

- Get consent from people now. You won’t have the chance to e-mail people to get consent after the bill becomes law. That will fall under the spam category.

- Stop renting or buying lists.

- Adopt e-mail best practices based on permission-based marketing.

- Update your e-mail header information. It will have to be included in your e-mails.

All good mearsure but I will add one more to the list which will keep Canadian businesses safe from the over zealous bureaucrats looking for job security... send your spam mail from a host on an American based server.