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.
> 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
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?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
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.