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.'"

Comments

Passing Laws will not eliminate Spam.

[MCraigW]

It really doesn't matter how many laws you pass, they will not eliminate spam. You cannot stop spammers you cannot find. You cannot bring legal action against those you cannot identify.

Unless you are able to track spam back to it's origin, you will never eliminate it. Telephone calls can be tracked to their originator, and so passing laws against, or restricting, telemarketing work, as you can then bring legal action against those who break the laws.

Pass all the laws you want, spam will continue unless (until) there is a track-back mechanism in place.

Aside: I recall that a town in Michigan passed a law declaring pi to be equal to 3.14 --- wonder if it worked.