Marketers Hope For Federal Anti-Spam Laws To Kill Bad California Anti-Spam Laws

from the covering-up-bad-legislation-with-more-bad-legislation dept

I have no doubt that California's anti-spam bill is terribly written and will cause many more problems than it solves, but that doesn't mean I want it covered up with more bad legislation. However, a bunch of marketers - who have a legitimate complaint about the California bill - are pushing to pass federal anti-spam legislation that would supersede all state anti-spam legislation. The article talks about a marketing company that uses a double opt-in method (which should be a requirement) to sign up people, who is now trying to remove all California residents from their database even though they clearly opted-in, because they're afraid they can be sued over the California law. The article also points out one other problem in the law that we hadn't noted before. Since you can sue anything advertised in the spam, if a spammer wants to cause trouble, they can just spam people with your site, and leave you to face the legal battles. At this point, I haven't seen a single anti-spam law at either the state or federal level that is likely to help - though, many look like they'll do some harm. Figuring out a real way to stop spam is important - but so far, none of these plans are going to do that.