One of my favorite topics here is spam and how to get rid of it. As I've said before on DT, the reason that legislation hasn't worked is because of a powerful lobbying organization called the DMA. They have opposed legislation for a long time. These are the folks behind junk mail and other marketing gimmicks. Even they have finally recognized the need for anti-spam laws. This reduces one of the bottlenecks to spam- somewhat.
The only reason they are realizing this is because with spam taking over, their own members' emails are getting lost in the noise and are therefore not effective. They are so blind and self-serving that they don't understand how useless their own stand is and how their power is making everyone including their own members suffer.
And their change of heart is still rather feeble. For they still want it to be legal to send unsolicited email. In other words, Opt-out laws rather than Opt-in laws. What does this mean? It means that the emails must provide a way for you to be removed from the mailing list.
Although I'm in disagreement with the DMA on this issue, their concept of opt-out is completely unrealistic even from their own worldview. No one uses opt-out anymore because all it does is validate your email address to spammers who will then send you more emails.
It is more than a little aggravating that our lawmakers are also so self-serving that they rather listen to a PAC like the DMA rather than what is obvious to any human being with an email address. Spam should be very illegal period. If the politicians need money, they can get plenty more than the DMA is offering if they would stem the tide of this scourge of the Internet.
