The high costs of spam ...

... are currently borne mostly by the recipient; not the sender.

A market-based solution to this nuisance was discovered by the technologically advanced culture of Victorian England with the development of the penny post :
[http://www.earsathome.com/letters/Previctorian/whopaid.html]

As the sender bore the cost of the stamp (rather than the recipient paying for delivery), fewer letters were left uncollected.

Were we to adopt a similar 'penny e-post' ( charging a nominal fee to send our texts and emails ), the price would quickly render spamming by the millions un-economic.

What Else Is Buried in these Regs?

It has been some time since our ruling parties have passed a law with the public interest in mind. Usually, regulations are designed to appease the financial interests that have paid for government. However, it is possible that industry itself is getting tired of spam. If so, perhaps this initiative is real, and the public good will benefit. That would be a good thing. I do worry however about the secrecy surrounding most of this government's regs, along with the propensity to collect private information about Canadians. We'll see. Great article.

I wonder how our government

I wonder how our government thinks that they're going to apply Canadian law to the spammers - most of whom are OUTSIDE Canada?

This is something that requires a comprehensive multinational approach. Unfortunately, various governments are too busy trying to control the internet as a whole. They're not worrying about actually cooperating with others to stop something that literally costs everyone billions per year to deal with.

As for the "penny-epost" idea, that's a grand idea for certain companies to make huge profits while making sure to increase the "internet gap" between rich and poor. It would, however, do little or nothing to stop spam since there would always be ways around it. The people proposing that option don't seem to understand the technology involved, or if they do they're ignoring it in favour of the big bucks their companies would rake in should something like that go ahead.

My Name Is Spam

I currently head up a group. I send out group emails. These emails end up being called "spam" by Telus email.

This morn. i got an reply to an email i sent out to two people yesterday. This reply was labelled "spam".

It is really difficult to organize and contact new folks when my emails are labeled as "spam".
Those who are not familiar with my email address usually just delete them.
This is very frustrating.

This "spam" labelling does not stop any of the real "spam"-it just confuses people.

SPAM is salty cooked Ham in a Can!

SPAM SPAM SPAM soory I could not help myself Monty Python!

erectile projectiles

I notice I haven't received any phony winner spams for about a month, as if this stuff has been stopped.

This, plus talk of legislation, reminds me of the barrage of erectile projectiles I remember being so annoyed by --- just before I decided to sign on for high-speed service a couople of years ago.

Is this just my impression? Or have some of the problems allegedly prompting this already been solved?

Now what about spam phone calls

As random calls are made to consumers with programmed messages. I don't like those either.

"Victory is Within Our Grasp"

"Victory is Within Our Grasp"?? Are you retarded?

I'm sure this law comes with the usual exceptions - prior business relationship, political party or charitable organization, etc etc. Remember the do not call registry? Where all the people who were bothering you in the past (long distance, political polling, Sears calling would you like your ducts cleaned, etc etc) were still allowed to bother you?

And I'm sure this law comes with the usual lack of teeth. Anyone else get robocalls about you've won a cruise? Guess what, not from this country. Where do you think 99.99% of spam comes from? I'm not being flooded with spam from reputable businesses with a presence in Canada who might actually be affected by this law, I'm being flooded with spam from fly by night prescription pill peddling sites, girls who want to xxx chat with you, knock off watches, "this is a sercity messg frum bank/isp/whatnot, pleeze enter yur personal info or you're accownt will be shut", and all the kind of crap that is illegal already anyway so what is one more law going to accomplish.

I'm real sure they're actually going to set up a huge call center to take 50 calls/day/citizen for each spam received, hire dozens/hundreds of investigators who will get their hacking skillz on and trace the spam back to some ISP in Russia or China, the message originating from botnet infected computer in Tampa Florida, controlled by some script kiddie in Lithuania, who is working for the Russian mob, who are perpetrating some huge credit card swindle. Yeah the government of Canada is just going to round up all those people and throw them in jail, problem solved.

ps - if you're not getting spam, it's because you have the default filter turned on at your new ISP, which gets you southdeltawalker's problem above.

There is no easy solution. The United States has had some success, since they have some major spammers attempting to operate legitimately on their soil, they have had a few high profile successful prosecutions. But the flow of spam hasn't been affected at all. Canada will have less opportunity for realistic targets to investigate, and much much less affect on the overall problem. The only way to really eliminate spam is to fundamentally change the architecture of the internet into something much *much* less free, as in freedom, as in "you would like access to the internet now? identification papers please". I'll just keep living with the mildly annoying mildly costly spam, thanks.