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ARTICLE · 08 MARCH 2019

CAN-SPAM Stands

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If there were some sort of literary prize for legislative acronym-engineering, the poor assistant responsible for inventing the title of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 wouldn't even earn a nomination.

United StatesMedia, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment
Alan Friel
Alan Friel
Linda Goldstein
Linda Goldstein
Randal M. Shaheen
Randal M. Shaheen
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FTC's public comment process yields no changes to email marketing rule

A Contrived Reduction of Nouns, Yielding Mnemonics

If there were some sort of literary prize for legislative acronym-engineering, the poor assistant responsible for inventing the title of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 wouldn't even earn a nomination.

After all, Congress has produced some real winners: The Robo Calls Off Phones (Robo COP) Act, for instance, or the Preventing All Your Bucks from Aiding non-Citizens is Key (PAYBACK) Act come to mind. If you want to explore a statistical analysis of congressional acronym use, check out data analyst Noah Veltman's "Congressional acronym abuse, 1973-2013" page. But CAN-SPAM? Now, that is kind of lame. OK, sure, we need to "can" spam, as in "toss it in the trash." But it's just as likely to be read as "Yes! Go ahead, you can spam people; why not?"

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