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Recently, the following editorial was featured in an issue of DEMC. I've re-printed it here with Abbie's kind permission:
"Whose Side Are You On?" In the next issue, we read:
"Email Is Still King" Abbie continued with an enlightening, positive and very practical piece on the future of email marketing. To subscribe to DEMC, which I recommend, send any email to Subscribe@SendFree.com.
Before I get into the main purpose of this article, I'd like to point out a few things. First, the responsibility for the time Abbie had to spend dealing with this was split about evenly between the spammer and the person sending the complaint. The spammer's part in all of this is obvious. However... Had the person sending the complaint included the full spam (with headers) in their first email, Abbie would have been able to handle the matter quickly and without frustration. It's pretty clear that she has no tolerance for spammers abusing her service. Second, when using the term "anti-spammer," one usually pictures a person who makes a habit of fighting spam. Someone with Clue, and who knows the ropes. This person was not the kind of "anti-spammer" you need to worry about in the usual sense. He's the kind of person who is even more dangerous to your long term survival as an online business: A frustrated consumer, lashing out at the people who are making his inbox a thing to dread. There are a lot of folks out there who fit that description. Be afraid, people. Be very afraid.
Brief reminder: When I use the word "spam" as a verb in this article, I mean: knowingly sending unsolicited bulk email. As a noun, I mean the emails resulting from that process.
I confess to sharing Abbie's frustration. I recently got an email, sent to editor@, rather than the unsubscribe address, with the subject line "SPAM ME AGAIN AND I'LL SUE YOU, YOU BAS***RD!" Upon checking my records I discovered that this person had not only been subscribed to TalkBiz News for over 2 years, he had sent me notes telling me how much he enjoyed some of the articles. Well. I guess he showed me! Phfffttthhht!
What? Of course I unsubscribed him. He doesn't belong on this list. Long time readers know that I have a Zero Tolerance Policy toward the premeditatedly stupid.
Let's move on to the lawsuit that started the whole discussion. I've had occasion to have a number of discussions with Wayne over the years. There is something very important about him that the 90% of Abbie's subscribers who sided with T3 Direct probably don't know:
This isn't a case of a forgetful subscriber or malicious anti-spam type falsely accusing a legitimate businessperson. It's not a case of someone having borderline policies, or pre-checked boxes, or failing to require confirmations on a list. This is about pure, 100%, opt-out spam. Unsolicited bulk email, sent without even a pretense that the recipients requested the material. Wayne makes no secret that he's a spammer. His web site includes a statement (or did, when it was up) that they acquire addresses by, among other means, harvesting them from publicly accessible sources on the web. In signed documents submitted to the courts in the case involved, T3 Direct states that:
"8. The Plaintiff Company does not deny that they do send bulk unsolicited email as part of their business." Wayne is accused of using the IP address of a church group in the spam that started this whole thing. He's been booted off every service provider he can find. Looks like a spammer. Smells like a spammer. Don't step in it.
Wayne Mansfield is not a victim of the spam problem. He is a direct CAUSE of it. He, and every other spammer, are creating the frustration and backlash that is hitting publishers and small businesses that try to use email in responsible ways. His lawsuit, like many of the suits against blacklist operators and companies that filter mail from known spam sources, is an attempt at bullying people into accepting spam, and relinquishing control over their own mailboxes. Not mine you don't, Wayne.
If anyone read Abbie's editorial and thought this was yet another case of the innocent being accused falsely, it's understandable that they'd side with T3 Direct. (Judging from some of the feedback from her readers, this was a fairly common impression.) I wonder how many of them would do so knowing what Wayne's business is really like? Or knowing that the vast flood of spam that continually grows in their inboxes is a result of the actions of people like Wayne Mansfield. Or considering that the plummeting response rates experienced by newsletter publishers and companies with legitimate in-house email lists are thanks to people like Wayne. People like Wayne, who kill your businesses while proclaiming themselves "Champions of small business" and "guardians of Free Speech," and who talk about "leveling the playing field." According to some friends in Oz, Wayne's previous business was sending unsolicited bulk faxes. He apparently has a history of forcing other people to pay to receive his ads. Small business advocate my aunt Fannie. He's "Just Another Spammer"TM.
So, how do 90% of the subscribers to a well respected newsletter end up supporting a spammer against an individual who may (or may not) have been responsible for said spammer being blacklisted? [1] It's possible that some misinterpreted the context of Abbie's example as being related to the case. It's also possible that they assumed that Abbie, a responsible user of true opt-in email marketing, wouldn't have second thoughts about which side she was on if she knew there was a spammer on one of them. (She didn't. I called her and asked.) It's also possible, and even likely, that they're just as frustrated as Abbie and I and every other legit publisher who's been falsely accused of spamming are. There are plenty of reasons for that frustration. Among them:
These are reasons. They're not good excuses. There's no excuse for blaming the victim.
[1] SPEWS will list you if you spam, admit on your site that you spam, sell spam support services or software, or in other ways attempt to advance spamming as a business model. I haven't yet seen any evidence that demonstrates that Joe McNichol was the direct cause of SPEWS' listing of T3 Direct.
Which side are you on? If you support Wayne Mansfield, you support spam. You also make the statement that you support penalizing people for reporting it. What do you think your mailbox would look like if there weren't people out there fighting spam, folks? If this suit against Joe McNichol is successful, the entire country of Australia will treat complaints about spam as an actionable offense. That's likely to result in the more spam-friendly ISPs in Oz getting even less responsive about nuking spammers. And THAT will mean much more of Australia being listed in various blacklists. Yeah. Wayne's helping us all out, huh? Thanks, Wayne. Think we could get him on Crocodile Hunter as the featured bait?
If you want to register your protest of this suit, I'd begin by blocking t3direct.com.au from sending mail to your systems. I was going to include the IP range, but Wayne's site appears to be down at the moment. It seems that, like many spammers, Mr Mansfield has a problem keeping it up. (This would go a long way to explaining the prevalence of porn and Viagra ads in your mailbox...) I'd also block his other sites: zapp.com.au, australianmarketingservices.com and iguru.org. You can also email your opinions to Wayne directly at wayne@scom.net. Be professional. Even when dealing with an unapologetic spammer, you don't get far by acting like a kook.
For those who think this couldn't happen in the US, I suggest a rethinking. So far there have been a number of suits against major blacklists and their operators. Stretching them to the people responsible for reporting spam isn't that big a leap. Right now there's a group attempting to start a class action suit against Julian Haight for the stupid behavior of some users of SpamCop. The fellow who started the group responsible for this potential suit has stated publicly that he thinks it's okay to spam any address listed on a business web site. In fact, he's stated that he thinks any businessperson who complains about spam should be liable for prosecution! As a humorous side note, this fellow claims his group is anti-spam in nature... Seems that many spammers think they can make their behavior okay by attempting to pre-empt common words and redefine them in ways that simply don't fit. I'd really like to see the punishment for spamming be a multi-year course in the proper use of the English vocabulary.
The point? Think. Yes, there are extremists on the anti-spam side. An unfortunately significant minority of them, with an unfortunate amount of undeserved and often abused power. And yes, there are true nutcases on the anti-spam side of the fence. As a rule, these are private individuals who have no power. They rely on verbal assault and threats of legal action to satisfy their undernourished egos. This does not mean that everyone who opposes spam is an extremist or a nutcase. (Sometimes it DOES seem like it, but as a rule they're quite sane, intelligent and civilised folk.) It also doesn't mean that we should take the spammer's side on these issues. That way lies madness.
Spammers are the biggest threat to any business on the net. They don't just slash response rates for legitimate email marketers, they undermine trust in online business entirely. How often have you heard people say that they refused to give their email address to a company because they were afraid it was going to get them a lot of spam? Do you think that applies only to questionable ventures? If so, it's time to rethink. In the article Spam Wars, I remarked that the battle isn't Geeks vs Marketers. I'm going to take the liberty of extending that. It's also not marketers vs anti-spammers. It's Spammers vs Everyone Else. Or we all lose.
We often hear people asking things like "What harm does spam really do?" or "Why not just hit delete?" If you're not familiar with the economics of the business, these are understandable questions. What most people who ask these questions don't realise is that spam, unlike postal mail or other offline forms of advertising, has the very real potential to destroy the medium carrying the message. Perhaps an example would clarify this a bit. Let's say there are 25 million small businesses in the US. Let's further say that each of these businesses sent as few as 100,000 spams, only to US email boxes, only once per year each. (That's a small run, by spammer standards.) That's 2,500,000,000,000 spams per year, just from US businesses. Let's say those went only to US residents, and that there were 250,000,000 Internet users in the US. (Roughly every single man, woman and child in the country.) That would be another 10,000 spams per person per year. Of course, businesspeople would get most of that. And we're not even close to 250,000,000 Internet users in this country... Looked at another way, assuming 8K per spam (the most recent average I've seen), that would be 20,000,000 GIGABYTES of extra spam. Per year. I'll let you figure out how many years of wasted time would be involved in downloading 20 million gigabytes of spam. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Every time you defend a spammer, you make that day more likely. And you add to the problems of every business operating on the net today. Is it any wonder some people get a little nutso when they hear someone say "Just hit delete"?
The DMA is pushing for opt-out, meaning, "We get to spam anyone we want until they tell us to stop." Those folks won't stick to a mere 100,000 spams per year, boys and girls. They want Big Numbers. And if they get to do it, so will all those small businesses. And they'll all send more and do it more often. Anyone REALLY want to have to unsubscribe from 20 or 30 thousand lists every year... per address? By the way - how many email addresses do you have? Don't forget your lists and autoresponders... The DMA is not your friend.
Many people will say that's a ridiculous set of numbers. And they'd be right. That won't ever happen. Not because the spammers won't try. They will. It won't happen because the servers will reach a point, long before it gets that far, where they can't handle any more email. Many of them have reached that point already.
It's easy to confuse the honest business that's falsely accused with the spammer who plays a good PR game. Don't fall for it, folks. Think. Yes, the extremists need to be stopped. That's what You HAD Mail! and Spam Wars were all about. They're my attempt at a beginning. We need to remember that the extremists aren't the majority. On ANY side of the fence. We need to take control of our own mailboxes, rather than allowing ISPs, web hosts and others to decide what email we can or can't get. Their filters are going to be biased in subtle ways, along a long chain of people with different standards than we have. The end result is a lot of mail that we want ending up lost. We need to remember that we CAN control our own mailboxes, if only by voting with our wallets. Most importantly, we need to remember that the real enemy is the spammer. Not each other. Think, people. Please... think. Do that, and you can make a difference.
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