Confusion reigns

Those who read this blog will know that I have been pretty critical of the Anti-Spam Act - so far from the perspective of spam volumes and ISP commitment to solving this.

Today I want to examine it from another perspective - that of the supposedly legitimate emailers in NZ.

Since the laws came in I watched with interest as email marketers and publishers have reacted in many different ways.

As recently as yesterday - one month later the laws took effect, I was receiving emails asking me to opt in, to opt out and so on in order to be compliant with e laws. I have also received quite of lot of completely unexpected and unwanted emails from publishers I have never heard of asking me to join their lists.

Amongst those who have tried to come to terms with the law, there are many who have failed to understand it - usually small companies who have seen email as a cheap and easy option. I hope they are not made an example of by the authorities because most of them are transgressing in many ways, but are clearly attempting to do it properly.

In fact, since the laws came in there has been zero publicity surrounding it - no warnings, no prosecutions, and with the exception of material released by Inbox, no comment about it at all.

I am all for improving the practices of legitimate email marketers and publishers - ultimately if standards are adhered to it will help in the war against spam, so wouldn't it be a good idea if the MED followed up their law with a review and some guidelines to help achieve this?

I suspect they won't!