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Spam And Alston - From Luddite To Pin-Up?
templeton069 writes "Alston (the Australian Communications Minister) has been lambasted as the 'world's greatest Luddite' for a long time but the spam bill introduced to the Australian Parliament last week seems to have struck an almost magical balance with everyone from the Internet Industry Association, the Coalition Against Bulk Unsolicited Email and the Direct Marketing Association, suggesting that it is about as good as it gets. So what's the story -- can you go from Luddite to pin-up in one step? And more importantly, does the legislation provide a template for other jurisdictions to implement low-pain anti-spam legislation?"
They don't mind banning those sleezy low-life spammers, but don't wish to restrict the targeted e-marketting of ethical businesses...
I suppose I should read the article, but I bet it takes less than a minute to find the escape hatch in this law. I'll be back...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Your comment might sound a little whiney to some moderators, but it raises a very important point. There is nothing stopping a team of unscrupulous direct marketers opening a "non-profit" organization that does the actual spamming dirty work on behalf of the parent organization. This is a huge hole in the legislation that needs to be fixed.
I don't think we'll see anything slow down until the first procecution.
Maybe we'll all have to put NO JUNK MAIL on our web pages to show we've put some effort into informing the miscreants.
It goes to show however, that once an IT issue directly annoys a minister it gets results. The more IT issues become mainstream the better.
For those that dont remember, Richard Alston is the Communications Minister that spent $4 million on a website. I dont car how many good deeds he does, he is still the worlds worst luddite. References for those who dont remember: $4 million website or $4 million website And he couldnt even spend that money on the local economy. His view of technology is that it has to be done with the big multi-national companies, local ones dont even get a look in (see the whirlpool link). Obviously the companies prefered are the ones that are likely to hire him as a consultant either now or later on.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
You are also exempt if:
the message relates to goods or services; and
(c) the body is the supplier, or prospective
supplier, of the goods or services concerned.
Holy Shit. That means that I have the right to send you email if I have something that I want to sell you, or think I might want to sell you. I think I might want to sell a penis enlarger. I will now email these 2 million people to see if they would be interested. Hey, the law lets me do it as long as I let you unsubscribe and say who I am.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
How is that "more damaging" ? While yes, it's perhaps ugly to see flyers stuck up all over the place, they're just visual - you can easily ignore them by not looking at them.
It's like banner ads on webpages. It doesn't take much to become conditioned to ignoring them. When ads first started appearing in the middle of article text, they were very obtrusive and annoying. Now people are used to them, and it's easy to skip right past. Your brain just instantly says 'thats an ad, no interest to me' with perhaps the slight few that get your attention somehow. (And note to banner desingers/PHB's/whatever: that doesn't mean flashing graphics! That actually makes it worse, your brain just treats it as 'white noise' and totally blocks it out).
I can notice this effect personally (and I'm sure many others can too) when I start reading an article that has an image for a headline (instead of using HTML). I'll be reading, and thinking 'what the hell is this about?' because to me, it just seemed to dive right into whatever it is talking about.. I'll have to sit back and take an overview of the page, then suddenly I realize that the headline is in giant letters right at the top. The problem was, my brain filtered it out just like it would for an ad or any other crap they stick in.
Back to the flyers-vs-spam issue: while flyers are something you can look past and ignore, spam is something that you have to directly deal with. Perhaps it's pressing delete, perhaps it's setting up a filter (and hoping it doesn't catch anything legitimate). To take it to the real world, spam is less like flyers on lampposts, and more like a door-to-door salesman. Forces you to answer the door, and deal with him (slamming the door, to telling him what hole to put whatever he's selling in).
I'd much rather have to ignore 40 flyers (by turning my eyes to another direction) than deal with even a couple salesman every day.
Speak before you think