Yesterday President Bush signed the CAN SPAM bill. It goes into effect 1 January. There is a lot of commentary around the web, including an article at news.com. Of course, a big part of the law is defining just what is legitimate email marketing. Organizations like the DMA want to know.
I haven't heard anyone discuss what is a next logical step for marketing. Since this is an opt-out law, any company can send you legitimate email marketing messages until you ask them to stop. Since this is legitmate email marketing, the next step is for AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and Internet service providers to sell their list of email addresses to the marketers. There is already a precedent for this practice in telemarketing. The local phone companies sell directory information, and your name and number is included unless you pay them to not include you. Perhaps the ISPs will allow you to pay a few bucks to keep them from selling your email address.
Posted by Doug Sauder at December 17, 2003 07:51 PM