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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Homeopathic Spam Bill

It was only reading Dan Gillmor's item on the new US spam legislation titled 'CAN-SPAM' (which, like the PATRIOT Act is actually an acronym that even the least socialised geek would be embarrassed to coin) that I realised its name meant something other than I had imagined when I posted last week. I'd assumed that the legislators were caught up in the old error of using 'can' to mean 'may' and that the intent of the legislation was to define the parameters within which marketeers may spam unwilling recipients, thus making atonement to political donors for enshrining the wildly popular Do Not Call list in law.

But no, this was not an unusal foray into honesty (as that's exactly what the bill does - tell spammers they 'may', and make recipients responsible for joining an unworkable 'do-not-spam' registry which will offer the ultimate master mailing list for the unscrupulous). Instead, in a blinding flash of cross-cultural insight, I realise it's 'can' as in 'trash-can' and that this bill is supposed to end spam - "throw it in the can". In my mind it now lacks even a g-string of respectability - the very title of the bill is dishonest in the tradition of the subject lines of the spam it tries to address and I am disgusted. At least homeopathists believe what they are saying.

posted at 10:48 AM (UK) | |