The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) went over the top yesterday, perhaps euphoric that Canada’s proposed anti-spam bill (C-28) received support in its review by the House Industry, Science and Technology Committee.
It has an article linking spam to kidnapping, theft and rape.
Kidnap. Rape. There are no lesser words that can be used to describe what happened to the daughter of an anti-spam investigator in Russia.
His daughter was recently released, according to Joseph Menn’s recent article on Boing Boing, after having been kidnapped from her home five years ago, fed drugs, and made to service men, as a warning to ward off further investigations.
The criminals behind these vicious acts were also responsible for large spamming organization associated with Russian Mob activity.
That’s why CAUCE believes we need to ban legitimate Canadian businesses from sending you an email asking if you want to get notified of upcoming sales and promotions.
As I have written before, Canada is on the verge of banning electronic communications that are perfectly legal in paper form (and actually encouraged by Canada Post).
The CAUCE article goes on to say that most spam is sent by organized criminal gangs, just like other organized crimes. I agree completely.
Why then are we so comfortable with restrictions on other emails. This bill goes farther than necessary and will be an inhibitor in efficiencies enabled by electronic commerce.
Why haven’t more groups vocalized the danger of legislation so broad that it will impinge upon choice of communications.
Actually, I’m of the opinion that we should ban 90% of the garbage delivered by Canada Post, the overwhelming majority which goes directly to landfill. A huge waste of resources and subsidized by our tax dollars. That and phonebooks.
I would unsubscribe from having a letter-mail postal address tomorrow if I could. Other than a couple of tax forms once a year there is hardly anything that lands in my postal box that I wanted to receive.