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Spam, Spam, Spam, Dole & Spam
seniorcoder writes "Check here for an article on CNN about the senate campaign of Elizabeth Dole being taken to court in North Carolina for the princely sum of $80 ($10 per piece of spam).
My best regards to Ken Pugh, I hope his action is successful." $10 per email sounds fair, now I can start planning my mansion.
Am I missing something, or is this a no-brainer? The Dole campaign's electronic mail is non-commercial, therefore the law doesn't apply.
Here's one location of the text of the law...
--- "It annoyed me, so I fixed it." -- Tom's First Principle of Engineering
Oh, boy, I finally get to use the *IANAL* bit.
The law defines "Commercial Electronic Mail" as having the principal..not *sole* purpose. Since a politician 'serves' the public, they are offering services in a sense.
Even non-profit groups offer a service when you get down to it. Service can be as little as donate '$10.00' to help keep the trails clean, to donate to help plant a tree, or help the local keep-alive shelters for animals.
I view any unsolicited email as spam. Unfortunately my friends sometimes send me 'spam' in that regards, but with as few friends as I have, the one or 2 'junk' mails a day doesn't compare to the number of male/female enhancement/enlargement offers, insta-weightloss, or get-rich-quick offers.
If the politician wins, then this will open the door for every 'non-profit' group to spam, and all it will take, is to set up a dummy non-profit company and spam for donations.
I hope the Dole campaign has to fork over $80.00.
*dibs on that patent, or you can optionalyl send me $1.00 and I will give you the rights to that idea*
Sig? What's a Sig?
Political speech gets a higher level of 1st Amendment protection than commercial speech.
Fer instance, municipalities may prohibit commercial signs on your front yard, but not "vote for" signs.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
In an August 26 letter to Pugh, the Dole campaign said that its e-mails are not commercial and thus do not fall under the anti-spam law.
As much as I would love to say Bullshit, spam is spam is spam, I know that I would be ultimatly proven wrong. This law was probably written and enacted by politicians, and I doubt that they would have been so allturistic as to stop political spam Though one possibly good outcome of this legal battle will be publicity. Let the world know that E. Dole is a supporter and user of spam. Maybe it'll even get some sort of backlash against the whole idea, but that is probably just wishful thinking again. And maybe, just maybe, this will raise a bit of awareness in our congress-critters, that we the people really hate spam. (By way of quick disclosure, I usually find myself voting Republican, but this type of thing is a good way for a cadidate to alienate me real quick.) In a way I now hope that Dole loses and this incident is cited as a part of the reason for it.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.