Slashdot Mirror
Australian Prime-Minister Sends Spam
Boricle writes "The Australian Prime Minister has been personally funding the sending of political spam to the members of his electorate. The spam has been sent under contract by his son's company of whom he is 'very proud.' Political Spam is permitted under Australian Spam Legislation."
Nothing surprising here, it's just as bad as the Can-Spam Act, which is just another way of allowing spams to continue.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I would, but name someone running who isn't worse.
Possibly. Compared to bombing another country and torturing it's inhabitants under false pretences I'd think spamming is a pretty minor offence.
I would have thought that with a son in the IT industry, Jonnie Howard would have been at least mildly concerned about the software patent/IP issues in the unpopular "free trade" agreement we recently got shoved down out throats.
Too much to expect, I suppose.
We don't even have an alternative come the next election because the Labor party has accepted them too. So much for democracy & having a choice.
So what can the average joe citizen do to fight crap like this, when all the parties seem to have identical policies on issues like this?
So the future of Australia lies in f**ing up everyone else's life so one person can get ahead?
We can all pack up and go home now. Australian mateship is dead.
Want to find out more about this idiot?
Try: http://www.johnhowardlies.com/
"That is what the future of this country is all about."
Oh, yes. It's all about the success of businesses due to nepotism.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I think it's important that there's an exception for political speech. Saying 'you can't send unsolicited email' is much like saying 'you cannot speak in public'. I have little problem with restrictions on COMMERCIAL email, since that's rarely (never?) important to guarding anyone's rights. (And no, you don't have any inherent right to make money by annoying people.)
You DO, however, have the right to tell people your opinion, and if you happen to tell many millions of people at once, well... that's technology now. Social pressure will be enough to contain this problem: Howard has probably gotten a lot more negative backlash from his spam campaign than positive. There really aren't any other alternatives... unless, of course, you want the government to get in the business of determining what kinds of political email are acceptable.
Surely, Comrade, you'd have no argument with the Party ensuring your email is safe? Think of the children.
For this and a million other reasons (not the least of which is this government's terrible morals) I suspect most Australian Slashdotters will be voting for someone else.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You are incorrect on every point you've made, and here's why.
a sp). Your assumption that he is an alcoholic has been rebutted by Latham himself, and I assume you wouldn't be so arrogant as to declare you know more about Latham than he does.
1. He is not allowed to spam all he wants, because there's a law in place that says he can't. If he's exploiting a loophole, it demonstrates the inefficiency of his government to make effective law.
2. The Labour Party has a party line that is decided as a group, and all members must adhere to that party line once it's decided. The fact that they were divided does not show dissent, it shows that there was a decent debate over the matter and that they're all capable of independent thought. That is something to strive for in order to create healthy debate about a policy which is going to affect at least 20 odd million people, not something to ridicule.
3. Pancreatitis (if you bothered to google it, or at least read the papers with an unbiased eye) is caused in approx. 80% of cases by gall stones and alcoholism. Approx. 15% of all acute cases are not able to be diagnosed with a cause (http://www.emedicinehealth.com/articles/10597-2.
4. There are more than 2 choices, and the increasing swing to the Greens is indicative of this.
5. John Howard's level of bullshit is incredible. He has consistently shown his ability to circumvent the truth, to not own up to his mistakes, and to lie to us. Go read Margo Kingston's book "Not Happy John" to get a rough idea what I'm talking about, or google to find a number of websites that can list just how many times he's lied about policy. His "examples" of leading this country are a disgrace, from his use of political power to further his own family's ends, his inability to be a man and own up to his mistakes and take the blame, to his power-hungry attempts to abolish the Senate and remove the only political limitations he has.
Finally, I have left out any comments on what is obviously your own personal opinion and not something you're trying to put across as fact (e.g. Latham is bullshit). But, you're the reason we're under increasing pressure internationally when we go travelling to explain Australia's actions, and you're the reason people like me want to leave the country permanently (and some have) because it makes us sick to see what's happening here.
Good luck voting in the next election, because I can assure you we'll be on opposite sides of the fence and your "Liberals" will need it.
But in this case its not the government sending messages, its a politician sending crap trying to get re-elected. There is a difference.
Your point would have more weight if it were possible for people's opinions of John Howard to be affected negatively.
By this I mean that he's already as low as he can go, not that he enjoys such popular support that people will never think ill of him.
It's different for politics though - if the number of people who react negatively to your spam is much larger then the number of people who react positively - in all likelyhood you'll lose votes.
Just because doing something is legal doesn't mean you'll benefit from doing it.
Every day I wake up to find that the idiot Australian Prime Minister has embarrassed me again.
Now he's spamming? And he's arrogant enough to believe that he's doing nothing immoral?
Get rid of the bastard.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Besides, not all forms of communication are allowed regardless of how political they are. A horse's head in your bed with a note saying "Vote for me or I'll kill you" should get the sender a gaol sentence.
Your .sig is so amazingly appropos that I thought I would point it out for the people who read with .sig's disabled:
...
the reason it is permitted is that the High Court has found an implied right to political communication in the Constitution. A federal law banning political spam would be invalid.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -- Goethe
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Your argument is quite persuasive, but I think it's at a bit of a tangent. You are arguing that, in essence, unsolicited email is trespass, much like standing on your front lawn with a sign would be.
In the cases you cite where people are compromising servers -- obviously that's not acceptable, and can be attacked via the standard hacking laws. But I don't think you argument entirely applies in the case where I am paying for my bandwidth and using my own PC... not doing anything illegal, no forgery -- just sending standard email.
When you put up a mail server, you are providing a public access. It is, in essence, a mailbox. Now, like your mailbox, you have the right to tell someone to not use it anymore, but the nature of a public service is that anyone can use it once. Further use can be handled like other variations of trespass.
There is a real danger, however, in having the government putting prior restraints on the kinds of communication that can be attempted, *particularly* political speech. In our zealous hatred of spam (and I hate it too!), I fear we are rushing into bad solutions. Laws are very hard to deal with, and are easily misused by those in power. Laws designed explicitly to silence people are scary. Spam is a problem, but it's one with technical solutions.... legalized prior restraint on speech (censorship) strikes me as a much greater problem. To get rid of an annoyance, we're accepting a DANGER instead... that's not very good thinking.
Returning to my original argument, I think the exception for political speech is important and necessary. If someone persists in sending you mail you don't want, you have every right to tell them to bug off, and to go after them for trespass if they do not. But, since there isn't yet any way for you to specify what kinds of mail you will accept, I believe that freedom is best served by making the first message non-punishable.
Yes, I realize that telling, individually, all five billion people on the planet not to bother you is not workable. We DO need a technical solution to this, some method of specifying the kinds of mail you want. But we don't yet have the electronic equivalent of a No Solicitation sign. Rushing into bad laws, to make up for that lack, somewhat reduces an annoyance, but sets a dangerous precedent.
Doesn't seem like a good trade to me.
ALP: Truth overboard... 27 lies and counting
johnhowardlies.com
So you spam a bunch of voters and 0.01% have a positive reaction to your message while 99.99% hate your guts for spamming them. How does that get you elected?
Non-political spam works because the 99.99% of recipients who hate your spam have no recourse. In politics, those 99.99% can vote against you.
What? Do I have a right to invade your home and make a political speech in your living room?
I'm not at all familiar with the Australian Constitution, but the American ideal of free speech is the freedom to speak, not a guarantee of being heard.
Keep your speech out of my fucking inbox.
-Peter
uuhhh.. sending physical mail costs you much more then email. You are paying with tax dollars and environmental impact or you are paying with effort of hitting the delete button.
Well, it really doesnt cost money.
Each spam message is like the additional crystal of sugar in the coffee cup. Sure, each one makes only a shred of difference in how it tastes, or even NO difference in how it tastes.
Put a few hundred of them together and it makes an impact. (Seriously, I help run a mail server hosting 23k email accounts, five times in the last two years the hardware had to be upgraded because of SPAM. Fully 85% or more of the connection attempts is spam. Sure each one makes little difference, but them together costs YOU money.)
I really don't understand how someone could be so short-sighted to not understand that.
The big difference between spam and snail mail, is the pain the sender has to go through (money/time) raises linearly with the number of messages, causing an automatic filter on how much I eventually get. Spam has no such restrictions, the impact on me and my equipment goes up linearly, but the spammer effort only goes up a tiny bit.
Comparing spam to snail-mail is foolish. They are only in name both "mail", otherwise it's a totally different transmission system with different economies of scale and costs.