Direct Marketing Association Deletes Spam Definition, Convenes Spam Summit

from the priorities,-priorities dept

It seems that one of the key arguing points everyone wants to focus on when discussing spam solutions is just how to define spam. The problem, really, is that users know how to define spam: email they don't want. The problem is that marketers, ISPs, and other vested interests realize that they still want to be able to send an occasional email that users don't want. Thus, they try to define spam in different ways. However, now that the Direct Marketing Association (hardly a disinterested party) is putting out a "best practices" document on email marketing, one of the authors of the document is complaining that they deleted his definition of spam. The DMA was complaining that the definition didn't include the word "fraudulent", suggesting that only fraud emails can be considered spam. The original author says that the DMA also watered down other language in the best practices document, including changing "must dos" into "should dos". Meanwhile, this very same Direct Marketing Association, who wants to define spam in such vague terms is also putting together yet another spam summit. In the past six months or so, we've had so many such spam summits, with absolutely nothing coming out of them. Everyone gets together, argues about the definition of spam, talks about why spam is a problem, suggests some solutions and immediately points out why all those solutions are bad. Then, everyone agrees that this is a topic that needs more thought, and heads off to "think about the problem" until the next spam summit where the cycle repeats.