Slashdot Mirror
European Union Says No To Spam
Peter Dyck writes: "CNN reports that the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) has agreed on Thursday to pass a new law banning the use of unsolicited e-mail. The resolution also bans the so-called inertia marketing for the promotion of financial services. This means that within the 15 EU member-states companies cannot resort anymore to direct marketing to sell their wares. Marketing is still possible, but the consumers must opt-in for it first." However, this is just one bend in a long and bureaucratic road.
This is fine passing the laws, but if you dont give the people teeth or enforce the law it's worthless.
The US has some anti-spam laws, and we dont enforce them, or dont allow the law to have any teeth.
Most spammers couldn't care less if it's legal or not.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...but so much more difficult to enforce it effectively...
"Good Luck, and remember - we're all counting on you." -Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!)
> Most spammers couldn't care less if it's legal or not.
Yes, most spammers couldn't care less, but most spammers are sitting in the USA anyway. It seems, spam and bad elevator music is the only thing the USA is exporting these days..
Where this law will help most is to shoot down hare-brained schemes by soulless middle managers and marketroids. With this directive,I can tell them, to please check with the legal department if their last stupid idea conforms to the law. This usually stops them fast.
As a side note, such laws sometimes work. I'm living in Europe, and I've never been called by direct markeing organisations I've never heard of who try to sell useless junk. Not during the day, not in the evening. I guess, the laws against unsolicited call and calls by machines don't really hurt.
I am really sad to see laws against spam because it gives The Man control over something which puts their toes in the door.
I would prefer to fight spam privately. I do not like it, for I've been on the net since 1988, when spam was rare and the net was beautiful. But I do not think the solution is to make it illegal.
I think the blacklist sites are a reasonable, unmoderated, sensible approach that doesn't carry the curse of giving The Man more power over my non-spam actions.
-wp
information is immaterial
As much as I am anti-spam, there is an issue to be considered before banning spam outright: the exact definition.
Cold marketing is an accepted technique for generating interest and ultimately sales. Even though unsolicited faxes are not permitted in many parts of the world, cold marketing related material usually bypasses this restriction. Yet the distinction is a hair's bredth.
In most niche markets mass advertising is not cost effective. Cold marketing is often the most effective resort for business in such markets. I have over time had several unsolicited e-mails that I do not consider to be spam, but rather cold marketing. Why? Because they are targetted.
Should cold marketting be banned in an effort to ban spam? Or should the definition of spam be tightened up to refer not just to unsolicited marketting, but unsolocited and not relevant to the person/organisation.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Sure ... pull out the 'free speech' card.
s -to-keep-track-of-active-email-addresses-option-fr om-hell'.
Let's see - if you stand on a street corner somewhere and tell people what you think, they have a simple choice: "stay" or "leave". If they leave and you follow them, I think your action changes from 'free speech' to 'stalking'.
If you send me email, that I have no interest in, then I can't just leave, because you will stalk me constantly with your 'html-open-pop-up-windows-from-hell-email' and your 'click-here-to-opt-out-but-we-will-really-use-thi
Here's a nice little 'go to jail'-card for your selection. If that won't help, I also have a 'get a free beating'-card for you, that you can exchange at every respectable store in the world.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
What I'd prefer to see is an approach like this:
- Corporations must obtain a consumer's explicit consent before sending an advertisement via e-mail.
- This consent may not be a part of any other agreement, i.e. it must be obtained separately from any other agreements made (in other words, no hiding it in the fine print).
- This consent is not transferable to any other entity; if a list is sold to another entity (person, corporation, or whatever), that entity may send a single notice asking for permission, but no more until permission is gained. Failure to respond to that notice must be taken as denial of permission.
- The permission given must be revocable at any time, and all advertisements must send clear and valid instructions on how to revoke that permission, should the user desire to do so.
- If an entity starts sending e-mail to a user without their permission (aside from the single notice mentioned above), the person has the option to press charges of harassment. Note that I said the option.
The idea is to require online advertising to be opt-in, without specifically banning any types of messages. I'm not certain how workable it is; ideas?"A law on unsolicited e-mail covering all other industries is expected early next year. The question of whether to apply opt-in or opt-out to e-mail marketing is provoking hot debate; the Commission favors opt-in, but many members of the European Parliament prefer the more industry-friendly opt-out approach."
This seems potentially dangerous. I hate spam mail as much as the next person, but it almost seems dangerous to make laws that say, "You can't talk to this person without their approval". If someone else writes someone email and mentions your product in it, are you liable, or do you have to be the sender? Where's the line between a "company advertisement" and a "personal suggestion". If I email a friend and tell him to check out a computer game that I think is cool, and he didn't solicit that "advertisement", is the company responsible?
What if I mass-mail it to hundreds of people? If the company's name isn't attached to the origin of the email, is it therefore okay? And if so, why wouldn't companies just get third-parties to do such things for them?
It just seems risky to me to make laws that limit the content of communications. As an analogy,. I do hate telemarketing... my phone is usually unplugged from 4pm-7pm every day... but I don't think I'd like a law that made it illegal for them to call me.
I think one of the potential problems with Spammers is their progression towards legitimate markets. Take monsterhut, a huge spamming company that slashdot has featured before. I know the owner and "brain" behind monsterhut, and truthfully, he could care less. If he were to go out of business, a hundred others would jump in to take his place.
In fact, he was excited when Slashdot did an article on Monsterhut - any fame is good fame when it comes to Spamming companies - because legitimate companies more and more are looking at Spam as a legitimate advertising medium.
I think what *would* happen if these laws were passed however, would be that the Spamming companies may still be allowed to operate - but they would have to operate their servers in foreign countries and effectively Run from law enforcement. This in turn would scare legitimate business away from spammers, reducing their market and leaving Spam open only to small timers who don't have the resources to generate huge email lists or fight court cases.
The trick I think is not to go after the Spamming companies directly, but to pass legislation that allows the gov't to go after any companies who knowingly use Spamming agencies - most companies dont' see "Spamming" or 'advertising" as their business, so they won't look any further into promoting themselves through their own Spam - business just tends to use what's available when it's outside their knowledge base.
Ace
Oh yes it sure is ! As I understand it, the directive next needs to be approved by the European Parliament which has a history of favoring "opt-out" over "opt-in" ("before the end of this year" probably means "not before next year"). If it is approved, the directive would then become "European law", i.e. UE countries will be required to pass it onto their national legislations ; however there usually is a rather long transitional period during which they cannot be prosecuted for not complying with the directive (1+ years transitional periods are common). If a country doesn't comply with the directive at the end of the transitional period, it may then be prosecuted by the European Court of Justice. This again takes time, and if a country really doesn't want to pass that law, it can usually still get away with it by paying a fine ; e.g. France has been in violation of the European hunt opening dates directives for years and there is no sign of it changing anytime soon.
This is just an overview of this awfully long and complicated bureaucratic process, I'm sure I forgot about several steps. This is one of the reasons I think that the current EU "constitution" sucks big time, another one being that even though those European Commission have very extended powers, no EU citizen ever appointed them for the job. We only get to vote for members of the weak "consultative" European Parliament. Calling that system a democray/republic is a joke !
Back on topic : as other posters already pointed out, one major flaw of this directive is that it only applies to "financial services" spam. A more general directive about unsollicited e-mail is expected to be discussed next year ; if it decides for "opt-out", the "financial services" directive will be rendered irrelevant. Given the track of "brilliant" technological laws of the EU, this is NOT impossible.
My point : if you're a EU citizen who wants spam to be outlawed, you're probably better off petitioning your own government rather than waiting for the European commissioners to get that one right. Even if the EC finally requires your national legislation to be changed, by the time it finally happens you will have enjoyed several years of outlawed spamming. Whether anti-spam legislation is an effective solution to this problem is another matter.
>This isn't like encryption, or spying on citizens, or taking away your guns (although they already did that in Europe).
Well no they didn't. You need to have guns before they can be taken away.
I propose banning all non-consentual commercial communication. That means public billboards, telephone calls and spam. etc etc.
Oh really? So my local pizza shop can't have a sign that says "pizza" because I haven't agreed to it in advance? Or maybe they can have a sign that says pizza, but not one that says "enjoy a Coke with this pizza." Or maybe they can have the sign but only if it is small. Give me a break.
Can the homeless guy ask me for money? Can a busker advertise his or her CD?
Why should the population have to endure a bombardment of unwanted messages when they almost universally detest them?
I don't detest billboards. I find them mildly ugly and occasionally useful.
Consumption (demand) drives capitalism, what are we going to do now that we understand the planet will never enable an equal opportunity (exploitation of the poor is the method that NorthAmericans and the G8 use to facilitate our own unreasonable waste and consumption)...
Capitalism gave you the computer you are typing on and the network we use to communicate. There is a pretty clear correlation between democratic capitalism and prosperity. How would it help the third world if we scaled back our lifestyle to be equivalent to theirs? We could shut down all of our sweatshops and they could have no jobs, rather than poor jobs, and no food, rather than little food.
Do you advocate an alternative to capitalism? If so, please name it. If you don't have an alternative then I'd suggest you stop trashing capitalism.
let alone that the planet is incapable of supporting 6 billion 'NorthAmerican lifestyles'.
The North American "lifestyle" is not a constant. It adjusts to fit the times. Many of our machines are much less resource intensive than they were fifty years ago. Non-polluting energy sources are on the horizon. Capitalism is the framework for discovering these solutions to problems. Have shares in a fuel-cell company because it helps me make money, it helps the environment and it helps feed the employees of the fuel-cell company. Capitalism is the solution, not the problem.
Polluting cars are a problem. But guess, what, non-capitalist countries have had polluting automobiles also. In fact they tend to pollute worse than ours! Once again, capitalism is the solution, not the problem. California's tough emission laws harnassed capitalism to funnel billions of dollars into alternative energy systems. Democractic capitalism offers the best hope of solutions to problems because it is a great mechanism for encouraging creativity and innovation.
If you want to be part of the solution you'll investigate ways to make capitalism compatible with the environment rather than trashing the only economic system that has ever been demonstrated to work consistently.
So, here is the problem, we allow* business to lie (market) in every way, using every channel at their own desire, to drive UP consumption - making our very real problem worse.
"We allow". Have you heard of rights? It is a fundamental human right for each individual or organization to communicate in almost any way with every other individual or organization. Although there are some limits at the margins (e.g. cigarette advertising is limited in many countries) the overall system is free. If you truly try to implement a system where unsolicited commercial communication is disallowed, you will need scores of draconian laws and thousands of policemen enforcing them every day.
The ironic thing is that you are quite open about your goal: you want to prevent corporations from encouraging certain patterns of thought. In other words you want to restrict free speech because you do not like what is being said. Does that sound right to you?
If you have a message that you want people to hear: shout it loud. But don't try to do so by shutting up your opponents through coercive laws.