The Federal Trade Commission said late Tuesday that it will not create a national "do not spam" email registry--similar to the previously implemented "do not call" registry--citing concerns that such
a registry might fail to prevent the flow of unwanted email, and may even have the unintended consequence of providing spammers with email addresses.
"A national do-not-call registry, without a
system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam and may even increase the amount of spam received by consumers," the Commission said. In
explaining its decision, the FTC emphasized the need to protect children from unscrupulous email.
Rather than aggregating names of users who'd hoped to avoid spam altogether, the FTC is instead
banking on technology to defend email inboxes. The Commission proposed adoption of more powerful authentication technology that would make it more difficult for spammers to disguise their email's
origin.
Under the federal CanSpam legislation signed by President Bush last December, the FTC was obligated to consider the formation of such a registry. Instead, today it admitted that it "would
be largely powerless to identify those responsible for misusing the registry." The CanSpam law went into effect in January.
The FTC's decision won raves from email marketing services firm Bigfoot
Interactive, which has been an outspoken opponent of the CanSpam law. "We are very excited about the FTC's courageous decision," said Al DiGuido, CEO, Bigfoot Interactive. "I think this is a
validation of everything we have been saying all along."
DiGuido believes that the work being done toward the adoption of standards for email marketing and for improving authentication technology
would pay off. He said that cooperation from Internet Service Providers is critical: "The key right now is: 'Can we all work together to have one standard?'"
According to DiGuido, the most
effective way to kill spam may be to hit spammers' wallets by creating a financial barrier to mass emails. He suggested a system similar to bulk postage commonly paid by those in the direct mail
world. "That would change the economics of delivering mail," he said. "It would make spamming economically unfeasible."
The Direct Marketing Association lauded the FTC for analyzing the issue in a
study that was released today. "Today's FTC announcement reflects the widely held belief that a do-not-email list would not be a do-not-spam list," said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president,
government affairs for The DMA, in a statement. "Such a national registry could impede the development of e-commerce while doing absolutely nothing to reduce spam in consumers' inboxes."