If you haven't noticed the flood of emails in recent weeks asking for your consent, you probably have been in the woods and out of Internet range. I hope you caught a few fish, fed a few mosquitoes and didn't get eaten by bears, because that's the only way you could have avoided the anti-spam notices flooding inboxes the country over.
The Canadian government at some point decided to save us from spam, but in doing so, it has likely gone overboard and will surely see a Charter of Rights legal challenge. It will fail that challenge.
The first email mentioning "consent" appeared in my inbox June 9, from Cision Canada, Inc., which the email says is "a global service provider of cloud-based software for the public relations and marketing industries with offices in the United States, Canada and Europe." I ignored it.
The next came three days later. I ignored it, too. Six days after that I got one from Saturn Minerals, a company who I am following for a future story for Pipeline News. I just accepted that one.
"What the heck is this all about?" I wondered, as I'm sure you did too by this point.
Next the emails started to come from companies and people I actually give a damn about. One is from JuneWarren-Nickles, a sister group of publications to Pipeline News. This one had a form to fill out. Then one came from Enform. Another came from the Estevan Chamber of Commerce. These are important to me, and if I all of a sudden start missing their emails, I am going to have problems. I needed to find out what is going on.
I contacted the local Chamber, of which I am a member, and got some background information. What it boils down to is this: If you want to send a "commercial electronic message" to someone, i.e. a business email, you need their consent first. You also have to make it quite clear the recipient can withdraw consent easily. The kicker is, after July 1, even asking for consent is considered spam. And spam is bad. Don't do that.
The Government of Canada website states, "When the new law is in force, it will generally prohibit the sending of commercial electronic messages without the recipient's consent (permission), including messages to email addresses and social networking accounts, and text messages sent to a cell phone …"
So theoretically, no one should be getting any sort of message from a business unless they said, sure, go ahead, by June 30. Does anyone actually think this will work?
Fat chance.
This is evidenced by the extremely low number of consent requests I have received to date, probably around 12. I should be receiving hundreds. It reminds me of the whole gun control debate - only honest, law-abiding citizens register their guns, and the scofflaws don't. Similarly, the consent requests I have received are from the most reputable businesses I deal with, and the rest don't seem to know or care about the impending anti-spam changes.
I'm looking at this not only from a consumer standpoint, but from a business perspective. I do professional photography. Nearly all of my business is with people I deal with face to face. But that wasn't always the case.
For instance, I used to photograph weddings, and thus, would take part in wedding shows. The key part of attending such a show is all merchants get a list of all the emails of the registered brides who attend, giving the vendors a list of likely clients. It didn't get me very far, but it obviously worked for some people. I wonder how this legislation will affect that?
As a businessperson, I want the capability of reaching out to potential clients. That's why we have this thing called advertising. That's why Canada Post is transforming itself to rely more on admail than first class mail. With a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees freedom of expression, I can't possibly see this legislation surviving a legal challenge. How dare the government say I can't talk to you?
Do I want to spam thousands? No. Do I want to perhaps send out an email reminder of a Christmas portrait special? Maybe. My understanding of the legislation is that I can no longer do that, even if it is to existing clients. Entire legitimate businesses are built upon such strategies.
Very little spam gets through to me anyhow. With three or four layers of spam filters, I get almost no spam. So what is the big deal?
Anti-spam legislation is dead on arrival.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
