Open Letter to CT Lawmakers: Unspam Thinks You’re Stupid

Dear Connecticut Legislature,

Matthew Prince, the chief executive of Unspam, thinks you’re a bunch of barnyard idiots. And he’s got good reason to think so. After all, he thought legislators in Utah and Michigan were fools, too, and he was right.

As a result of Prince’s intellectually insulting arguments, lawmakers in those two states implemented Unspam’s misnamed child-protection do-not e-mail registry. I say misnamed because far from protecting kids, these registries may actually help facilitate predators getting kids’ e-mail addresses.

If you don’t believe me, just ask the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC maintains that Unspam’s scheme may give pedophiles and other dangerous people a means to contact kids.

Better yet, check Unspam’s contracts. They explicitly say that marketers using the registries may extrapolate valid information on the addresses. They also absolve Unspam of liability if marketers misuse the data. Translation: If one of the pornographers using the registries has a sicko on staff who decides to use the information to e-mail your kid an invitation to meet him in a local park, Unspam isn’t responsible. Pretty slick, eh?

New evidence that Prince thinks you’re idiots surfaced in the way he reportedly began his testimony in your legislature last week.

“Like Trevor Hughes, I have a financial stake in this legislation,” Prince reportedly said.

Prince’s testimony followed that of Trevor Hughes, in which Hughes, the executive director of the E-mail Sender and Provider Coalition, pointed out that Prince has applied for a patent on the technology for running these registries.

By saying that like Hughes, he has a financial stake in your decision, Prince is trying to position his scheme as morally equivalent to Hughes’s trade organization.

The unspoken logic is this: Hughes has a financial stake. Prince has a financial stake. All financial stakes are equal. Therefore, the two have morally equivalent interests in seeing things go their way.

The reasoning begs the question: Is Prince that stupid? Or does he think you’re that stupid? My guess is it’s the latter.

Hughes runs a trade group. Companies pay him to, among other things, run around the country and fight these legislative battles for them. Companies voluntarily pay Hughes because they think he provides a service that is worth at least as much as the money they give him.

They can stop paying him whenever they want. According to Hughes, membership in the ESPC has grown recently because of your intent and that of legislators in Hawaii, Georgia, Wisconsin and Iowa to pass child-no-e-mail registry laws.

Also, the ESPC’s members have a financial stake in your legislation. But they, too, are engaged in value-for-value, voluntary business relationships with their customers.

On the other hand, if Prince convinces you to decide in his favor, his revenue has the potential to skyrocket. But companies wouldn’t pay Unspam because they thought they were getting a valuable service. They would pay Unspam because they would be compelled by law to do so.

Call me crazy, but it sure looks like Prince is aiming for a government-enforced monopoly.

If Prince gets his way, all legal, adult-oriented content will be priced out of e-mail.

And believe me, no one I have spoken to in the commercial e-mail industry thinks that Unspam is offering a service of any value. Also, a lot of people arguing against these registries—including me—are parents who want to protect their children from online pornography as much as the next guy.

When Prince tries to compare his financial stake in your proposed legislation to Hughes’s, Prince is practically saying: “I think you’re a drool-bucket moron who can’t recognize grade-school-level intellectual dishonesty when you see it.”

He was right about the folks in Michigan and Utah. Here’s to hoping he’s wrong about you.

Cheers,

Ken Magill