Stupid Media Watch: A Canadian Logic 101 Failure

Is there a school somewhere teaching reporters never to question privacy and anti-spam advocates’ claims? Sure seems so.

The latest example of intellectual laziness by a consumer reporter on the subject of spam was an article by Carly Weeks in Toronto’s Globe and Mail calling for a tough national anti-spam law.

“Spammed out,” read the headline.

“Government inaction has left Canadians overwhelmed by junk e-mail – and at risk of identity theft. While other countries enact stiff measures, our inboxes remain under siege,” said the subhead.

First, Canadian inboxes are no more under siege than anyone else’s. And the idea that Canadian inboxes are under siege because the country’s federal government has failed to act is preposterous.

In its argument for a new Canadian anti-spam law, the article trotted out the usual spam-is-threatening-our-very-existence statistic that unsolicited e-mail is estimated to be 80% of all e-mail traffic, never once mentioning—as is always the case—that the vast majority of it is filtered out of our inboxes.

However, the article didn’t simply say 80% of e-mail is spam, it says 80% “in Canada” is spam.

Did the borderless nature of the Internet even enter the reporter’s mind? Apparently not.

Because if it did, she wouldn’t have been able to write the whopper that followed.

“Other countries, such as Australia, have had luck reducing spam after introducing strict measures in 2004, including fines for repeat offenders of up to $1.1-million for each day they are found to have sent spam,” said the article, citing not one shred of evidence.

There’s a reason she cited Australia and not the U.S. She was probably repeating one of her privacy-advocate/anti-spam source’s claims as fact.

Anti-spammers and privacy advocates love Australia’s law because it’s opt-in based, thereby outlawing any unsolicited commercial e-mail. Conversely, they hate the Can Spam Act because it is opt-out based, meaning it doesn’t outlaw unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail.

As a result, anti-spammers and privacy advocates cite Australia’s anti-spam law as a success even though it has netted the country a grand total of one conviction. They cite Can Spam as a failure claiming the fact that spam levels have risen dramatically since it was enacted as evidence. They conveniently ignore the fact that that Can Spam has been put into play by U.S. law enforcement to get convictions and settlements more than 100 times.

The Globe and Mail article then went on to quote Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair of Internet and e-commerce law, saying: “With tough legislation, with real penalties, we would see the amount of Canadian-based spam decline substantially.”

According to anti-spam outfit Spamhaus’ top-ten list of countries from which unsolicited e-mail originates, the No. 1 country is by far the U.S., followed by China and Russia. Canada didn’t even make the list.

So even if Giest is correct, a new Canadian anti-spam law would barely put a dent in the amount of spam hitting Canadian inboxes.

What will put a dent in spam are more actions like last week’s shutdown of rogue service provider McColo by its upstream providers, which resulted in an estimated 50% to 70% drop in spam levels worldwide. And no, the McColo shutdown and a similar shutdown of service provider Intercage in September were not vigilante actions, as some contend. They were simply companies cutting off service to other companies violating their terms of service.

This isn’t to say Canada shouldn’t pass anti-spam legislation. Canadian law enforcement should certainly be given the tools to do its part to go after the bad guys. But people’s expectations of what legislation can and cannot accomplish should be realistic and they need accurate information to form those expectations.

The Globe and Mail failed the Canadian public utterly in this regard. Weeks’ piece was just the type of ammunition privacy advocates wave around when trying to get legislators to enact laws that adversely affect law-abiding marketers while doing little to address the real problem.

Then again, a year or two after Canada passes an anti-spam law, the country’s consumer reporters will have an opportunity for an easy byline on a story claiming Canada’s law was a failure because spam levels didn’t drop after it was passed, just as U.S. reporters have done so often with Can Spam.