[Kye]

For example: CAN-SPAM. If I want to send emails to a list, I have to burn $90 of my scarce dollars every year just for a PO box for the address at the bottom on the off chance someone sends a letter to unsubscribe. Unless I want to put my home address in every email, which I don't, and no one should. Unsubscribe links and highly effective spam filters were already completely standard when the law was passed in 2003. It doesn't matter if the email you send doesn't actually require it because every mailing list provider requires it.

[loeg]

Eh, unsubscribe links were definitely not universal in 2003 and they barely are today. But the situation has definitely improved in the last 20 years.

[AnthonyMouse]

The point is the rules are daft. A sensible rule would require a functioning unsubscribe process in the email, which every piece of software would then automate as an unsubscribe link. The actual rule requires people to be able to unsubscribe via a postal mailing address, which is unreasonable and ridiculous.

[webspinner]

Yeah, who wants to do that? I don't want to, no one wants to. It's a stupid law!

[loeg]

I'm just saying, your earlier comment would have been better without the sentence: "Unsubscribe links and highly effective spam filters were already completely standard when the law was passed in 2003."

[AnthonyMouse]

The person you're replying to is not the person you're quoting.

But also, the people with unsubscribe links now but not in 2002 would still commonly send their messages from a consistent address, making it easy to block them if you wanted to, and making even primitive spam filters highly effective against them. Meanwhile the people who randomize their from address to prevent this are the people who still don't have a functioning unsubscribe link.