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16 Feb 2008
Recently, several of my friends have been writing about mailers who boast that they're compliant with CAN SPAM. Here's our distilled advice in one handy word: don't. A mailer boasting that he's compliant with CAN SPAM is about as impressive as an employer boasting that he pays minimum wage. Of course, he complies with CAN SPAM, it's the law. If he sent mail that violated CAN SPAM, every message he sent would entitle the recipient to sue for up to $250, along with a variety of other penalties potentially including five years in the slammer. It's not really surprising a mailer wouldn't admit to breaking the law. CAN SPAM basically applies the very weak rules for paper junk mail to e-mail: no fraudulent claims, and recipients have to be able to opt out eventually, after an absurdly long two week window. It most definitely does not define "spam", for any version of spam. Every ISP, ESP, and backbone network in the country has much stronger opt-in rules for their customers, so when you say you're CAN SPAM compliant, you're saying you're not a mailer they want to serve.
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