The transcripts from my visit to Parliament Hill concerning Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce protection act, is now available.

40th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Full transcripts here

Witnesses include:
Professor Michael Geist (Canada Research Chair, Internet and E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual)
Mr. Dennis Dayman (Secretary Treasurer, CAUCE North America, Inc.)
Mr. Matthew Vernhout (Director-at-large, CAUCE North America, Inc.)

[ READ MORE ]

Via a number of discussion groups and email lists, I received the following bulletin from Michelle Sullivan, founder of the Blacklist SORBS, regarding the upcoming closure of this service.

SORBS is currently looking at a sale of the services, hardware and code base - and according to their website "A number of offers have already been made, we are evaluating each on their own merits".

Posted in full blow with permission:

All,

Please feel free to forward this message to any other location/mailing list.

It comes with great sadness that I have to announce the imminent closure of SORBS. The University of Queensland have decided not to honor their agreement with myself and SORBS and terminate the hosting contract.

I have been involved with institutions such as Griffith University trying to arrange alternative hosting for SORBS, but as of 12 noon, 22nd June 2009 no hosting has been acquired and therefore I have been forced in to this announcement. SORBS is officially "For Sale" should anyone wish to purchase it as a going concern, but failing that and failing to find alternative hosting for a 42RU rack in the Brisbane area of Queensland Australia SORBS will be shutting down permanently in 28 days, on 20th July 2009 at 12 noon.

This announcement will be replicated on the main SORBS website at the earliest opportunity.

For any hosting suggestions/provision, please be aware that the 42RU space is a requirement at the moment, and the service cannot be made into a smaller rackspace without a lot of new hardware, virtual hosting is just not possible. The SORBS service services over 30 billion DNS queries per day, and has a number of database servers with fast disk to cope with the requirements.

Thank you for all your support over the years,

Michelle Sullivan

[ READ MORE ]

Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (Radio Netherlands World) is reporting that the Current Dutch Anti-spam legislation, focusing on Unsolicited Emails to individuals is being updated to also include emails sent to corporations.

Full report:
The economic affairs ministry says all spam e-mails will be against the law in the Netherlands from October. It was already illegal to send spam e-mails to private individuals but the ban will be extended to cover companies as well.

Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Frank Heemskerk says the measure is not just aimed at nuisance e-mails but also against crime. Spam e-mails can be used to obtain information contained in computers. Under the new measures, Dutch companies which send spam e-mails will face fines of up to 450,000 euros.

Hat tip: @aliverson via Twitter

[ READ MORE ]

Originally published on CAUCE.org.

On June 11, 2009 Dennis Dayman and I set an afternoon with the Canadian Government's Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology to stand witness for the Electronic Commerce Protect Act in two capacities. First we acted as representives for CAUCE NA - an all volunteer organization representing the consumer and end user - and secondly as representatives of the legitimate email marketing community. Below you will find our opening statements to the Committee (and if you have two hours to listen here is the link to the audio recording of the entire session - transcripts to follow).

Mes dames et messieurs je m’appelle Dennis Dayman. I am the Secretary-treasurer of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, CAUCE, a group representing computer-users in Canada, and the rest of North America. CAUCE thanks you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-27, The Electronic Commerce Protection Act.

As you can probably tell from my accent, je ne suis pas Canadien, je
suis un Americain, et je regrette que je ne parle pas français.

So why is an American here today addressing this esteemed committee?
Well, reflecting the way in that spam is a pan-global problem, some
years ago, CAUCE Canada merged with their American counterparts to
better serve our constituents. Spam respects no borders, and to best
represent computer users on both sides of our mutual border, we decided
to mount a coherent CAN-AM front against the blight of Spam 2.0

You heard me correctly ladies and gentlemen. CAUCE, once the exclusive domain of computer geek anti-spammers has openly embraced the marketing community for a decade now, and counts among its members and executives many individuals and companies who have an enlightened view as to why an anti-spam law works in all our favour.

My colleague Matthew Vernhout and I both work for large international ‘email service providers’, (myself for Eloqua, and Matthew at ThinData Canada’s largest ESP, both of these companies were founded and continue to operate in Toronto. Our companies provide sending infrastructure for marketing email, sending on behalf of such companies as Fidelity, Air Canada, American Express, and literally hundreds of small and medium-sized companies and we are very much in favour of this law.

Continue reading: "Presentation to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science & Technology / Comité permanent de l'industrie, des sciences et de la technologie (INDU)"

[ READ MORE ]

As a Director with CAUCE I'm happy to share this news - Original source CAUCE NA

Cauce North America Inc. -- The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (http://www.CAUCE.org) -- Today announced at The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group meeting (MAAWG) that it has received additional financial support from Return Path Inc.

The viewpoint of computer end-users is often one missing from the anti-abuse discussions, CAUCE works to ensure they have a place at the table and these stakeholders' unique and vital perspective is considered when formulating policy to help stop Internet abuse. As well, CAUCE actively works to assist training law enforcement agents in the investigation of illegal spamming.

CAUCE, after a decade of purely volunteer ad-hoc operations, officially incorporated in 2007 and began to accept paid memberships from individuals and sponsoring companies and organizations to help defray operating costs.

"The ongoing, and generous financial support of Return Path by way of their renewed corporate membership in CAUCE will help us to continue to advance the interests of the true victims of Spam 2.0 (the blended threat of spyware, spam and viruses), the computer end-users" said CAUCE president Dr. John Levine

Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path inc. said, "Supporting the interests of consumers is vital to the health of the email ecosystem, and CAUCE is uniquely suited to work in this area. Return Path is delighted to support CAUCE in its ongoing efforts to create a clean, well-lighted place where consumers can feel safe and confident interacting through email."

"This renewed corporate membership will allow CAUCE to maintain a demanding travel and conference schedule in the coming months, including ongoing discussions with lawmakers and governments, The London Action Plan/EU Contact Network of Spam Authorities conference in Portugal, and of course, having representation at MAAWG" explained John Levine

Levine continued "CAUCE was actively involved in the Canadian government's Task Force on Spam in 2004-2005, the end-result of which was the recent tabling of Bill C-27 in the parliament of Canada; memberships such as that of Return Path Inc. allow us to continue to directly involve ourselves in the legislative process".

About CAUCEThe Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email CAUCE North America was formed in March 2007 from a merger between the original CAUCE in the United States and CAUCE Canada, combining the strengths of the two sibling CAUCE organizations. CAUCE NA, as an all-volunteer consumer advocacy organization, has moved beyond its original mission of encouraging the creation and adoption of anti-spam laws to a broader stance of defending the interests of the average Internet user. CAUCE NA is led by a combined Board with a cumulative century of experience in the field of Internet advocacy.

CAUCE NA represents the interests of Internet end-users to the following organizations:

* The Anti-spyware Coalition (ASC)
* The Anti-phishing Working group (APWG)
* Digital Phishnet
* Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
* Internet Governance forum
* The London Action Plan / EU Contact Network of Spam Authorities
* The Stop Spam Alliance

About Return Path
Founded in 1999, Return Path helps commercial email senders get more email delivered to the inbox. Our tools and services give senders the insight and resources to diagnose and prevent email deliverability and rendering failures by improving and maintaining their email sending reputations. Our Professional Services division then helps our client improve ROI and response by creating consistent and compelling subscriber experiences across the email customer lifecycle. Return Path runs the internet's most widely used third-party whitelist, the Return Path Certification Program. Return Path also invented the Sender Score, an email reputation measure based on data contributed by ISPs and other receivers of large volume email into the Return Path Reputation Network. We offer free access to our Sender Score to any sender, receiver or consumer of email at our reputation portal: http://www.senderscore.org Information about Return Path can be found at http://www.returnpath.net

[ READ MORE ]