Direct Marketing Association Wants Better CAN-SPAM Funding

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is saying that CAN-SPAM is working, and would work better with more money.

A survey coordinated by the DMA claims that spam is down radically. They say that last year a typical inbox received 137 spam / week. This year the number is down to 78 spam messages. That's almost a 50% drop. I'm highly skeptical of this figure. At best it may the result of more users using spam removal programs.

DMA members are responsible for a lot of advertising that you'd probably rather not get. Unwanted mail in your postbox and phone calls during dinner are two great examples.

One of the DMA's major goals is to promote the legitimacy of direct marketing. The DMA has sought to distance itself from hard-core spammers and the illegal activities they engage in.

They do support "legitimate" email marketing. However, their definition of spam seems very narrow - only including pornographic and fraudulent messages. These types of messages are frequently the toughest for email blocking applications to intercept.

This is in line with my favorite definition spam, "spam is what the other guy does."

When questioned about whether most end-users would consider email sent by DMA members to be spam, DMA president Robert Wientzen responded, "look over there! isn't that Stevie Wonder?"

Considering their effective pro-spam stance, it's not surprising the DMA supports continued funding and "enforcement" of the CAN-SPAM act. Most studies on the law have found it has not helped with the e-mail spam problem.

SpamButcher can be obtained as a free trial download from this site. SpamButcher can function as an spam filter for Outlook Express or used with many other mail applications.

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