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Canadian Privacy Law v. E-Mail Harvesting
sbowles writes "Canada's Privacy Commisioner has ruled that a business e-mail address is personal information protected under the federal privacy legislation (PIPEDA). Law professor Michael Geist (a leading e-commerce and privacy law expert) received an unsolicited request to buy seasons tickets from the local football team. His e-mail address had been harvested from a University website. The ruling indicated that 'You are allowed to collect and use publicly available information, but the use has to be directly related to the purpose for which the information appears in a directory or notice.'"
Great so can I post my email address for the purpose of having potential vendors contact me with the stipulation that they must also pay me royalties for the use of my address?
Could this be SPAM where the spammer pays you.
Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Document Act (PIPEDA), essentially all the information on a business card -- title, name, and business address and telephone number -- is not considered to be personal or protected under the legislation, which came into effect Jan. 1, 2004.
Because e-mail addresses are not specifically mentioned in the Act, Assistant Privacy Commissioner Heather Black pointed out in her ruling that an e-mail address, whether publicly available, is not covered by the PIPEDA exemption.
This makes sense to me. The only reason this act does not cover addresses is that they're not mentioned. Clearly, if the phone number, etc would be considered public, the email address should also be considered public.
"Canada's Privacy Commisioner has ruled that a business e-mail address is personal information"
Just because it is an email address used for business it is still personal for you. Information that is sent out via that address is still connected to you and is a medium for you to state what you have to say/type. In fact many companies automatically add a disclaimer at the bottom of company emails basically saying "Views expressed in this email are not nessesarilly the views of this company"
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
My wife does consulting and sometimes she contacts sites (partner@somesite.com) to explore possible partnerships. Well, it has happened now twice that she was reported as a spammer. The first time, our ISP (city-run cable company) immediately disconnected us with no explanation. When I finally contacted them, they were unapologetic and threatening at first. Needless to say, we switched ISPs.
The bottom line is, I hate spam, too, but sometimes people are far too trigger happy to report legitimate business inquiries as spam.
There is a law suit between Canada's two major airlines. Air Canada alleges that Westjet harvested flight information from its web site. They are also arguing that, although the information was publicly available, the way it was harvested amounted to a misuse.
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It's a little more complex than that but the two cases sound similar. Also, as far as I know, the Privacy Commissioner doesn't have the powers of a judge. Having said that, I wonder if the e-mail case has revealed something about Canadian law that will be important in the Westjet case.
news.airwise.com/stories/2004/12/1103829066.htm
>Common sense has to enter the equation at some point
I think thats what the law is about. If I don't want it, leave me alone.
Just because you think that I may be a customer doesn't mean that you have the right to disrupt me.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Found this amusing rant on the nature of Canada recently.
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http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/02/oh-oh-canada
This is what defines Canada's virtue to me. Canada does not convert. Canada heals. Canada leads. First among the nations, creating the Peacekeepers. Pushing the Land Mine ban. Still not perfect, but doing their best at reconciling issues with the aboriginal peoples even as other nations such as Australia choke on their responsibility. Allowing Quebec its poetic, myopic thrashings. I'm always a little dismayed at native Canadians who whinny about Canada's missing identity. I, as an adopted son, know damn well what Canada is. "Come, have a pint, I don't mind your odd accent -- mine's a bit dodgy too. Your business is your business, we can all be friends as long as you buy the next round."
The nasty bots are still quite capable of understanding NO and SPAM, so it's more effective to have some other armoring, like my old favorite: "blahdeblah@dirty.balls.org, castrate to email (remove the .balls)"
-mkb
As usual, the Canadians are way ahead of America in this democracy experiment. The "directly related" and "right to reproduce personal info" factors of these controls are essential. The really effective legal construct is to apply copyright to personal info: the personal info is sent to a recipient to complete a specific transaction. The copyright is not transferred, and the copy itself is permitted to be retained only for the duration of the transaction, which expires in a short time appropriate to that kind of transcation. No further copying is permitted. Canada's privacy laws are already consistent with that application of copyright to info other than corporate media and software. If Canada can put copyright teeth into these privacy laws, we could harness all the corporate copyright agression to protect humans as much as we protect corporations. And maybe they'd even be a good influence on these United States - which badly needs it.
--
make install -not war
I just happen to be researching and writing something on PIPEDA...it sounds like this principle (3rd of 10) was violated:
Obtain Consent - Every organization is responsible for getting consent from the person whose information will be collected, used and/or disclosed. Consent is defined as voluntary agreement with what is being done and may be implied or expressed. In addition, the individual must be told the details of why, how and when the information is being collected, used or disclosed.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
AFAIK this is more or less true in all of Europe. It has certainly been true in France for a long time, I can't remember when I last saw some French Spam. Actually Ican't remember when I last saw some European based spam either.
All of my spam is also US centric apart from the odd thing in chinese every now and then (about 1 in a few thousands). At least that's what I gather from the glances I take in my spam folder every now and then before I delete it.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I think this is a matter of how you view "public" release. If I put an email address on my web site, so that users of my site can send let me know if there are brokern links, incorrect information, etc. Why should I suddenly be deluged with advertisements for fake Viagra? That is not why that email address is there, and that intention should be fairly obvious. A mailto link, with the words, "If you find any broken links, or have any questions about this site, please contact me here", in no way implies that I want ads for anything.
I like this ruling, and wish we had a similar law in the US. If my work place lists my email address in a public directory, with the intent that people who need to contact me about subjects relating to my work can easily do so, I should not have to contend with people sending advertisments to that email address. It is fairly obvious that the intention of that directory is not so that I can be advertised at.
Unfortunatly, the US seems to be stuck on this idea that you have no privacy in a public place. This is a wonderful idea if your intention is to live in a surveillance society, bad if you hope to live in a free one. Privacy, even in a public space should be the default, I shouldn't have to hide in my home if I wish to keep anything about me private.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Unfortunatly, the US seems to be stuck on this idea that you have no privacy in a public place. This is a wonderful idea if your intention is to live in a surveillance society, bad if you hope to live in a free one.
:)
I'm intrigued and confused. There are two freedoms: the freedom from being pestered by someone selling something, and the freedom to sell something. Which takes precedence?
The bit about a surveillance society loses me...how would such a society alleviate the spam problem? (Incidentally, I for one do not want to live in a surveillance society
Actually, the highest-quality immigrants Canada ever had were the Vietnam draft-dodgers and so forth that came here in the '60s and '70s. Their legacy is still being felt, as the town of Nelson, B.C. recently found out (they tried to erect a monument to the U.S. war dissenters who settled there, but were bombarded with huge, angry letter-writing campaigns from the U.S. - and Fox News, of course. So they cancelled the idea).
I mean, honestly, can you imagine a better group of immigrants than young, educated, peaceful, English-speakers? I can't.
Wouldn't the question then become:
How would they know you wanted it if they didn't ask you?
To wit, most people would respond:
I'll let you know when I need it.
Which they will then respond:
How do you know you need it if you don't know about it?
And so on...
Which, to me, is sort of like a cat/dog chasing its tail. It didn't know it was there until it looked and then the elusive tail is hard to catch. But round and round they go until at last they are either exhausted from trying or they've managed to catch it. Whereupon they usually find out the hard way that the tail is actually attached to themselves. Which is similar to this situation.
The problem is that people want to know about things and then be given a chance to poke and prod at whatever (or kick the tires so to speak). While sales people want to just show you the item and immediately make a sale. The reason things are like this so much is because if the sales people do not meet their sales quota each month it is highly likely that they will be fired and replaced by someone else who will try harder to meet that sales quota. These sales quotas are in place because many businesses have embraced these bean counter methodologies (ie: ISO1960 or whatever they are called - we have them here as well). These bean counter technologies are really demented. They work like this:
Year #1: You set everything up to start counting.
Year #2: You count everything.
Year #3: You look at what the numbers say while counting everything again.
Year #4: If Year #2 was worse than Year #3 you are doing well. If Year #2 was better than Year #3 you are doing worse. If things remained at about the same level look around for ways to cut costs and improve output. (This usually means layoffs, more work for those left behind, and higher levels of output production.)
Year #5: Repeat Year #4.
The idiotic outcome of this methodology is the diametrically opposed views of one or two workers and unrealistict output. What it usually causes is more sick leave, worker burnout, and yes - higher output. I can not name names, nor point fingers, but I have known others who have left because of this bean counting.
To bring this back on track though, it is the above kind of mentality that causes many of the companies to at least try mass marketing through e-mail. Because it requires very few people, doesn't cost more than a few pennies to send each missive (so low overhead), and they do get responses (improved output).
I actually was asked to work at one such company. I refused. I was to be their internet person to grab people's e-mail addresses and to put them onto a list for e-mails to be sent out to. As I said - I refused. I tried to get them to set up a website where people could come to view their products instead (like Amazon.com or maybe eBay does it) but they didn't want to work it that way. I can not see helping such an endeavor, and took a different job.
In any event, if your e-mail address is made publicly available in any of the mediums, then you can rest assured that you will probably get junk/spam mail. Not that you want it, not that I want it, but you will probably get it. I applaud the Canadian Government's attempts to curb this problem as I applaud any government which tries to make laws which favor their citizens more than their corporations or companies.
Later.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.