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Politicians Seek Spam Loophole
Steve B writes "An article in the Mercury News by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro (respectively heading an "advocacy management and communications software company" and a "political e-marketing firm") wraps the case for political spam in all the usual Mom-Flag-&-Apple-Pie cliches. They conclude with a cynical appeal for a special exemption, while condescendingly instructing anti-spammers that their efforts are "better focused on commercial e-mail" and painting spammer Bill Jones as a victim who made a few trifling mistakes."
Is it just me or does what they are saying really just boil down to, "Everyone elses Spam is bad but ours..."
Very similar to the old cliche that some people really believe that their shit don't stink.
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First we'll have exceptions for candidates for public office.
Then we'll have demands for party affiliates and candidate support groups to have their own equivalent exceptions added, since they speak on behalf of the candidates (purely nonprofit, of course).
Then we'll have demands from the lobbyists to have their exceptions added, since they push the issues that the candidates deal with on a daily basis, and if a candidate is, say, pro-life, why shouldn't the pro-choice lobbyists get equal say?
And finally, since many lobbyists are on corporate payroll, the corporations can just take the gloves off and ask for their own exemptions, since they might want to support a particular candidate, and as a legal "individual" (without voting rights, of course), they are entitled to endorse a particular candidate in means outside of the normal campaign contributions.
But, of course, once they get their hands on the e-mail lists of a certain group of constituents, you can bet that it will accidentally fall into the wrong hands, along with the demographic/geographic data that accompanies it.
Marketer heaven. And, before long...Spammer heaven.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I love how he repeatedly says how the candidate saved money. Not once mentioning that it actually costs ISPs money to deliver these things. Like he thinks by pushing the send button, the magical internet fairies come and deliver each email by hand. But then again, politicians were always good at spending other peoples money.
Once political spam becomes mainstream, you'll soon see some dirty tactics.
It's an old trick for a candidate's staff to canvas for votes for the OTHER guy -- at 3AM. No better way to piss people off and get them to vote for you instead of them. Print up campaign stickers for the other guy, and paste 'em on people's car bumpers. Make sure they're the sort that don't come off without special chemicals. There are several variations on this theme that have been used before and will be used again.
So when your mailbox gets bombed with 100 spams, all asking you to vote for someone, and all infected with Klez -- don't assume they actually came from the candidate.
In reading the piece, "Internet can level the political playing field" by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro, I felt the overwhelming need to stress a single point that seems to have been completely missed by the writers. They utterly failed to realize that e-mail costs the recipient of the e-mail message time and money. Be it the 3 seconds wasted downloading the message from their mail server, or the cost of the phone call for the internet access, or the usage of total monthly bandwidth that some ISP's allot to users, e-mail costs the receiving party money. This is the very heart of the problem with ANY unsolicited e-mail. Television, radio, and print ads all do not cost the recipient of the advertisement money. If it wasn't an ad for a politician, it would be an ad for some product or service; in any case, the recipient would still receive an ad. But e-mail is a very cheap way to mass sent advertisements to others while making them pay for the "privilege" of receiving the message. This is the very reason why people are not allowed to fax unsolicited ads to other fax machines. The cost is a lot more dramatic in the case of a fax machine, but the cost is still there even in e-mail. It should not matter whether it cost you $.10 because of paper and ink in the case of the fax machine or the $.01 it can cost for the bandwidth, memory needs, and time it can cost for an e-mail.
Here is a simple question that I would like answered. Should we, as consumers, have to pay every time someone sends an advertisement for their product to us? If we did we would all be broke very quickly. The people promoting and advertising products, services, or political campaigns are the ones who should foot the bill of spreading their information.
Unsolicited e-mail is like sending something cash on delivery without a way of refusing to receive the item. Any person or group of persons should be held accountable for any and all monetary charges they force upon others. Unsolicited e-mail in any form should be dealt with in the harshest manor available to the recipient. There is no such thing as unharmful unsolicited e-mail, if it costs anyone other then the sender money, then it is causing harm.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The cost needed to run a successful campaign in the US is already ridiculous. And this weeds out people who cannot obtain truckloads of corporate money - surely not a good thing.
How high does it have to go before you would start having doubts?
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Well, I depends on your point of view. I already get a lot of spam on how to evade US tax laws - or how to get certains US permits, etc. Guess what, I don't live in the US. Getting messages from US politicians would certainly be spam in my book.
At least, viagra works - the same cannot be said from politicians. :-)
The core problem is always the same "it's not spam if it is sent to the right people". The problem is, spammers are not very good at selecting the right people.
If you add up all the people that cannot vote in the US, don't care, don't want to get political stuff at their work address or hate the guy anyway - it makes quite a lot of people that will get unsollicited e-mail, eg will be spammed.
Political messages can be handled in the same way that legitimate communications from organisations: by using an opt-in mechanism.