Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
None here, unsolicited bulk emails are spam, ban them all.
My guess is that small businesses incur far greater costs and losses with time and resources whilst deleting spam or updating spam filters than the few who benefit marginally by sending it out.
Spam is not "legitimate marketing", I'd definitely support a ban in the EU.
Direct Mailers have always been able to send mail to people without first getting their consent.
A person that is running for political office would not be able to reach the people in his district unless they came and gave him consent. Then he would only be able to preach to the converted. Doesn't that raise any question about freedom of speach to anyone?
Large merchants with established lists would be able to flurish while smaller merchants could not operate.
We label all merchandising mail 'SPAM' and construct this barrier. What is our purpose? Is their no legitimate merchandising mail? Is their no way to curtail the misuse without putting small companies out of business.
What is the future of the Internet if we exclude commercial enterprises from using it?
I don't think that's what's in question here. What I would like to see disappear is all the 'Buy Viagra now!' and 'Enlarge your...' and 'See so and so naked' crap. These guys only get their email lists by spidering a whois database or something else and then send something I don't want or is completely useless to me.
Direct mailing is a far more sophisticated marketing tool. The mailouts are based on demographic information and the odds that I'll see something interesting to me in mailbox are exponentially higher than when I look in my inbox. Direct mailing says here's our target audience how can we effectively reach them with our message. Then they spend large amounts of money to send out a quality piece of advertising.
Email spammers simply grab the largest email list they can find and then hit everybody with the same message whether it is relevant or not. Then they spend a few hundred bucks for some type of mailer software and away they go. Another key with email spammers is that they don't honor a remove request - rather they say 'hey we got a live one' and add you to the next list that they sell.
Let's face it - the vast vast vast majority of email spam is for Viagra, p0rn, long disctance calling and debt consolidation. These are not the 'commercial enterprises' I have any sympathy for.
These guys only email spam because they can't do SEO :)
hehehe - I have to agree with oilman.
Although I run e-mailing activities, these are all opt-in/opt-out lists. All lists are at zero when they start.
I'd support the ban to help get rid of dozens of e-mails that get through the anti-spam filters.
Also, what dotcom is endangered by this law? I know of no major dotcom using unsolicited email.
Not that I want to start an argument or anything... but the whole point of the internet is that it's free from bureaucratic intervention. Or at least that used to be the point.
There are so many ways to get rid of spam without laws that I won't even start listing them... This forum is populated with webmasters after all.
We don't need more laws. What is it with Americans. :-)
Lol... We've already seen what happened to the constitution.
Yes they have ... and its bloody annoying! If I WANT to buy something, I go looking for it on the internet or in a magazine. I sure as heck don't want people sending me messages to my home or through my computer or calling me just as I sit down for dinner to tell me about their darned products which I neither want or need!
There are privacy issues involved ... and for some inane reason, individual privacy seems to take second place to those who choose to trespass on your property to deliver their mailers, or invade your privacy through your computer or home telephone anytime they wish. Its a pet peeve of mine and needs to be stopped.
Oilman: >Direct mailing says here's our target audience how can we effectively reach them with our message.<
Couldn't agree more!
Oilman: >Another key with email spammers is that they don't honor a remove request - rather they say 'hey we got a live one' and add you to the next list that they sell.<
Not only do they not honour the "remove" clause. They have a habit of making certain that your name gets on every list possible!
Ian Kelley: >What is it with Americans. :-) Lol... We've already seen what happened to the constitution.<
I am not an American ... but what is that supposed to mean and what does it have to do with the topic of discussion?
I just want to point out that unsolicited FAX transmissions have been illegal for some time.
True story. I was getting flooded with unsolicited faxes. I suspect they got the number from my web site. Of course, there was no sender identifying information, but there was a toll free number to be removed from the list. I tried that option, but to no avail. I traced the company listed on the fax and sent them polite but nasty Emails, to no avail. I then got one which I could actually call the company. It had to do with a seminar on being a Notary Public. I complained and demanded to know who sent the fax. They refused to provide the information. So, in accordance with the "law," I contacted the State Attorney General's office. Their response: "We can't do anything unless we know who's sending it."
If this is how effective the telecommunications act is, no Spam law is going to work. But here's an idea I came up with after seeing it on another site.
I do track Spammers. I hate them. If I'm able to identify them, I reply to their Spam with some legal babble saying "It's a violation of our sites terms of use to..." Surprisingly, that's been working to a degree. I have since added "We charge $500.00 per occurrence for every unauthorized possession and/or use of our contact information. Consider yourself warned." If you're thinking "is this legal?", maybe yes, maybe no, but it has made a difference. I figure it this way. If you notified them they you will bill them X amount of dollars and they don't heed your warning and send another Spam, send them a bill. If they don't pay it, file in small claims court for failure to pay. It's about $35.00. They'll more than likely not show up and be found guilty in absentia and the court places a judgment against them. If enough web sites enact this type of policy, I think Spammers will have second thoughts. But as FreeBee pointed out, I waste a lot of time deleting and blocking Spam.
I believe this is in reference to us American's having the annoying habit of writing tooooooo many laws "Damn, I hate fleas. I think I'll write a law making it illegal to be a flea" :)
My best understanding is that the EU is not in America.
[businesseurope.com...]
Liane: >There are privacy issues involved.
Granted. There is also freedom of speech issues too. It would seem that a marketer has a right to hawk his wares too.
If we applied the same logic to the telephone no one in business would be able to call any potential clients unless the granted specific permission.
If we applied it to mail along with our phones and our emails business would ground to a halt.
How far do we go? No commercial TV or radio with advertising unless all the views or listens agreed to have commercial aired?
I think a better solution would be to just make people follow protocols and force accountablility. Make it highly illegal to not to obey the protocols or use inflated priorities, such as bulk mail set at high priority and such. Force them to show proof of list signups and where addresses were collected from. Make it illegal to sell email lists without some authority, or to buy them. Anyone that forges or fakes headers to spend a year in jail per email sent will stop quite a few. Make it so you have to register through your ISP before you can send mass mailings or your shut off. Why is it still legal to run address harvestes around the net, etc...
We all talk about promoting our web site through getting links by sending emails to related web sites to ask about swapping a link, is that not unsolicited. They didn't ask for it. How many emails is the cutoff before it is spam??
The adult email thing is a big problem needs some special consideration, but who is the person who makes the descision of what is adult content. People all over the world have different customs. In Saudi Arabia you can have many wives, but they can't show their knee caps in public. Though in Europe we see topless beaches quite common. In my opinion Viagra is poison and should be illegal, but tell that to the guy who needs it to enjoy a night with his wife. When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity I bet he never though of this delima.
There are many things to do to combat spam, making email marketing illegal is not a smart one in my opinion. I have never send a spamming and never will, but I have ran optin newsletters in the past. I think a good start is educating internet users on what to do if they get spammed, but nobody wants that job. I do know that if nothing is done to stop it, email will become useless or a pay service. None of us want that.
I have some crazy conspiricy theory about why email spam is allowed to go on so untouched in the US, but that is probably due to reading 1984 twice or watching the movie Brazil too many times.
