The Canadian Anti-Spam Act and What it Could Mean for You

The Canadian Anti-Spam Act was passed in December of 2010, and is expected to come into force some time in 2013.
If you think it won’t affect you because you don’t send mass emails trying to sell random products, or don’t infest other people’s computers with spyware, you would be wrong. It creates tools to fight spam, but unfortunately defines spam so broadly that it will affect how most of us conduct business. The definition of spam is so broad that it goes far beyond what the average person would consider to be spam.
My personal view is that this Act is fundamentally flawed. Creating tools to combat spam such as emails sent out by the thousands to try to sell drugs would be welcome by most people. But the Act defines as spam things that most of us would consider innocuous, and indeed desirable. For example, if you and I meet at an event, it may be spam if afterwards one of us sends an email to the other suggesting that we should talk further about our respective services. Or if the child of a friend emails you offering to shovel the snow off your driveway for money, it might be spam.
Read the rest of this article over at David Canton’s blog, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.