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Spam And Alston - From Luddite To Pin-Up?

Posted by timothy on from the what-firm-resolve dept.

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?"

2 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Count your change, daughters and pets by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If the Direct Marketing Association likes it, then something is wrong. Odds are, there's a weasel clause that basically defines spam as "that which the DMA doesn't do".

    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.
  2. It won't make a lot of difference by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Web cacheing is apparently illegal in Australia too is you take one of the laws to it's logical conclusion. That deparment doesn't have a good history in drafting legislation (or anything really).

    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.