How the DMA Supports Spammers
Nov. 29, 1999
By: Ian Oxman
chooseyourmail.com ian.oxman@chooseyourmail.com

I have always assumed that the role of the Direct Marketing
Association was to protect the marketing industry from 
practices and legislation that can damage our ability to do
business. That is why I'm confused by the DMA's position on
spam.

Most marketers understand that spam damages our ability to
do business on the Internet. It erodes the trust of consumers,
clogs e-mail boxes and steals bandwidth. But now, with the
DMA's recent announcement of the E-Mail Preference Service, 
the DMA has taken a proactive step to protect spammers.

The cover story for the E-MPS is a simple one. It is a nationwide
opt-out database that e-mail marketers can use - for $100 a 
year - to purge their e-mail prospect lists of those people who
don't want to receive unsolicited commercial e-mail. It is 
supposed to protect consumers from spam by letting them say no
to e-mail marketing. In reality, it is just another of the DMA's
efforts to preserve the status quo and protect spamming as a 
marketing tool. Opt-out lists such as the E-MPS don't solve the
problems associated with spam, and actually encourage spamming
by providing the veneer of legitimacy.The E-MPS has one basic
application - to purge spam e-mail address lists.

The problem is, how do you enforce compliance with a global 
opt-out policy?  The E-MPS is intended to be a tool for DMA 
members, but most legitimate marketers will have little use for
it. They have already secured the permission of current and 
potential customers to send them e-mail and don't need to purge
their lists. Spammers won't use the E-MPS either. Those who make
a living spamming aren't DMA members and have no incentive to 
pay $100 to use the E-MPS or other opt-out list; they just want
to send as much e-mail as possible. The only possible purpose of
the E-MPS is to legitimize spamming. The DMA wants Congress and
the public to believe it is helping to police our industry and
protect consumers. To achieve that goal, it is serving up a red
herring in the form of the E-MPS in hopes of fooling lawmakers
into doing nothing to stop spam.

Unsolicited commercial e-mail, whether it is DMA approved or not,
by definition shifts the delivery costs from the advertiser to 
the consumer. The consumer pays for access to the Internet. Part
of that cost comes from the delivery of spam. In other words, 
the hundreds of thousands of spam messages being delivered every
day are arriving postage due. Angry consumers make lousy 
customers, but that is exactly the atmosphere being cultivated by
the DMA. By defending and promoting a practice that costs
consumers time and money, the DMA is helping to poison the well
for all legitimate e-mail marketers.

The DMA is telling consumers that they should register on the 
E-MPS to avoid e-mail advertising. Consumers who have opted in 
to receive materials aren't going to know what to do. They'll not
know if registering with E-MPS will remove them from programs in
which they've registered. For marketers, confused consumers are 
nearly as unappealing as angry ones.

Mainstream marketers have spent a lot of time and money collecting
e-mail addresses - and the permission to use them- from consumers.
Common sense argues that these lists don't need to be purged. By
announcing the E-MPS and actively protecting unsolicited 
commercial e-mail as a legitimate business communications tool,
DMA president Robert Wientzen has publicly committed to defending
the rights of spammers to practice their craft. The DMA is 
damaging its membership in a knee-jerk reaction through an 
uninformed position whose end result will be protecting
pornographers and con artists at the expense of legitimate
mainstream business. I would argue that the DMA should actively
and publicly support legislation that protects the consumer and
the marketing industry by ending the practice of spamming. A 
vehicle for achieving that goal already exists in Congressman
Gary Miller's HR 2162, the "Can Spam Act." HR 2162 empowers
Internet service providers to protect their subscribers from
spam via a no-trespass law while preserving the e-mail 
marketing rights of nearly all DMA members.

In the end,the E-MPS is nothing but a smoke screen designed
to confuse lawmakers and consumers into believing that the
marketing industry is interested in protecting e-mail users from
spam. In reality, the DMA's only interest is in protecting the
status quo, regardless of the consequences for the consumer or
the industry.

Ian Oxman is president of e-mail marketing firm
chooseyourmail.com, Chicago.
His e-mail address is ian.oxman@chooseyourmail.com. 

Copyright 1999 Countenay Communications Corporation
Reprinted with permission of the author