The criticism against Canada's anti-spam legislation extends beyond absurd claims about restrictions involving family and personal relationships. Indeed, much of the discussion has focused on the impact of the law on small and medium sized businesses. Barry Sookman catalogs
a wide range of supposed concerns, most of which appear to envision a
world in which the only way for a new business to develop a customer
base is to obtain marketing lists and send unsolicited commercial emails
to potential customers.
It is true that the starting point of the law is that businesses must
have consent before sending commercial emails. Canada is moving to an
opt-in world that
gives consumers greater control over their in-boxes and will ultimately
provide businesses with higher quality lists of people who genuinely
want to receive their messages. Notwithstanding the default requirement
for opt-in consent, however, the law contains numerous exceptions that
are available to businesses of all sizes and which allow small and
medium sized businesses to engage in active (and likely more effective)
email campaigns. The exceptions include:
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareThursday January 31, 2013 |
|
View
|
