Also, if customers are already on your list, they've implicitly open in to receive transactional and commercial emails. You may get in trouble with your ISP or anti-spam authorities, but unless you're blasting out millions of spam emails without any way to unsubscribe, you will never get in trouble with the law.

I'm Canadian, but thanks for stopping by!

edit: I should mention that I'm Minnesotan, I am routinely mistaken for a Canadian (much to real Canadians' frustration), I dearly love Arcade Fire and Tim Horton's Timbits, and I have a bad tendency of ending sentences with the word "eh," eh?

edit: and, just to tie it all back together, check out where Goodspaceguy is from: http://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=201007306418.pre-decision_201...

    It does not automatically follow that people doing
    something criminal are doing something morally repugnant.

I make the same argument about using an above-the-board SMTP service like Campaign Monitor as I would about deploying to a managed app stack like Heroku: sure there are other ways (including DIY) but the cost/hassle ratio is vastly in favour of doing the right thing.

The question is not whether it's technically possible to get away with grey area techniques; it is. I'm writing from the perspective of someone that has to give clients advice that I'm proud to stand by in a public forum.

Then, I've had them ask for me to build tools that could help them mangage email campaigns... I build those tools, and I know what they could do with those tools. I hope they don't and I counsel them about what they can do and cannot do. I'm OK with this the same way I'm OK with telling them they're free to go over the speed limit in a car I built for them if they want. It's their choice and I believe there's a difference between occasional speeding and reckless endangerment the same way there's a difference between the occasional campaign from the boise real estate lady who put her stack of business cards on her email list and the true BULK spammer...

If you read what I actually wrote, I did not suggest that accidental spammers (ie. your clients and mine) are bad people. Please understand that you are misquoting me.

I further believe that it's up to folks like you and me to be patient and help people do the right thing when possible.

I was responding to the letter of what you wrote "they're criminals" and the spirit of what you wrote "they're boobs", and I don't think I misconstrued either.

I'd further add that it's the "people who get it" vs the "people who don't" attitude of the OP that spurned my response, not the defense of accidental spammers.

In the very next paragraph, I say:

"What of the accidental spammer, though? How do we break them of their regrettable bad habits? Can they be shown a better way?"

I specifically stop to differentiate between the two very different personalities I'm discussing.

If you are offended by my assertion that there are people who don't know that they are spamming, then yes — we disagree... and you haven't worked with the people in question.

In Canada, spammers are criminals. Elsewhere, they're just selfish assholes. Some people mean well but don't know they are being assholes. I'm sorry if that bothers you, but chances are this article wasn't written for you.

Better be careful who you paint with that wide brush. I know marketers with legitimate opt-in lists of 250,000+ people. It's not how many emails you send -- it's about making sure that you're sending those emails to people who want to receive your emails, and who have opted in to do so.

Good bit of link bait I guess but not a constructive article.

Want to talk about it? I'm leftisto on Skype.

It's not a problem in isolation, either. The bigger issue of systems that no longer meet the definition of economic scarcity is growing. Scarcity has always been our way of controlling abuse by excess, but many things are becoming so cheap as to negate this method. We need to build other methods into our World.

Some systems that have dropped dramatically in price, such as phone usage minutes, haven't become a problem (much). Others, such as calories, have become severe ones. Email abuse didn't hurt much else, but it's nearly ruined email itself.

I'd be interested to hear the argument for this.

I can only hope this is a joke.