>The definition and acceptability of "spam" is as yet undetermined,
>although federal courts have ruled in favor of FREE SPEECH, deciding
>that unsolicited Email is protected by the same constitution rights
>as any other message.
Don't count your job security before it's hatched. I'm sure you're
familiar with the old adage that your right to swing your arm freely
stops at my face.
Think back - remember the 1980's? Ronald Reagan, Duran Duran, and junk
faxes. All three are has-beens now.
What happened? Junk faxes cost the recipient money until the recipient
explicitely tells the sender to stop, a "negative response" expense which
is clearly illegal with ground mail under postal regulations and, since
the '80's, faxes as well.
The majority of people with email accounts are charged by time, download
volume, or some combination of the two. Therefore unsolicited bulk email
falls into the same category of forcing people to incur "negative
response" expenses as with faxes. The situation is tantamount to sending
people magazines and forcing them to pay for the subscription until they
explicitely tell you not to.
A good number of Congress members agree that this is a relevant argument,
and a move is under investigation to extend the anti-junk-fax law to
include the same protections for the consumer with email as they now
enjoy with their fax machine. Personally, I expect it to be a
legislative slam-dunk and that by this time next year CyberPromotions and
other offenders will be forced to find a more meaningful way to earn a
living than helping their clients get posted to the Advertisers BlackList
<http://www.pap.waw.pl/cgi-bin/plconv/isoHnopl/math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~a
xel/BL/blacklist.html>.
And even though you know better than to assert that protecting people
from incurring the cost of recieving unsolicited bulk email is any sort
of violation of free speech, you are apparently among those perpetuating
that misconception, which requires a reminder for those prefer logic
instead:
Any effort to extend the anti-junk-fax law to include email will no
more
hinder your rights to free speech than it did for junk fax vendors.
You will still be free to publish your material at your web site, to
submit links to it at search engines and other locations where your
customers can find it, to engage in non-recipient-costing ground
mailings, even to shout it from the rooftops (local ordinances about
disturbing the peace not withstanding <g>). Merely protecting consumers
from incurring an unnecessary expense does not curtail any other ethical
avenues available for the expression of your message.
>Newbies realize that things like broadcasting, advertising, and
>the like EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD, and as such, fully expect to
>find these things "on the Net".
"Newbies" are often not as familiar with current laws as they pertain to
other related forms of advertising which cost them money, and are not as
aware of the avenues which exist for voicing their opinions to protect
themselves.
But even here you make our point: "...fully expect to find these things
'on the Net'". Yes, "find" - as in search engine, or from a reference
sent through more ethical means. But an expectation that folks can find
things on the 'Net is different from an tolerance of junk finding them.
>Please come down from your "ivory tower", and know that the
>Internet is a reflection of our planet's various societies,
>containing tidbits of every aspect of life. This includes
>those day-to-day annoyances like "junk" mail.
Please come up from the gutter, and know your audience.
While your means of accumulating addresses is not a purely random process
as with CyberPromotions (you know, the notorious company run by Sanford
Wallace out of Pennsylvania that uses fake "reply to" addresses and
ignores all "remove" requests), it is still only slightly better than
culling addresses from the contents of a specific newsgroup.
But beyond the specious value of your means of "qualifying" your leads,
with your intelligence and experience certainly you are aware that with
an audience as relatively sophisticated as folks with Internet access
(education, household income, etc.), "pull" (providing content that draws
your audience to your site) is so much more effective than "push"
(shoving your message down people's email).
And given your recognition of the annoying nature of unsolicited email,
if your client's message is heard at all above the din of dozens of other
poorly-qualified unsolicited messages, it is remembered only as an
annoyance.
The days of annoyance in advertising went out with the advent of the
remote control. If you were truly hip, you'd understand why even
television advertisers are spending big bucks to make more their
commercials into engaging content - people do not respond to annoyance as
they did 20 years ago. With email, although the recipient has already
incurred the expense of downloading it, there is little chance it will be
read if you use honest "reply to" addresses. The "delete" key is the
remote control of email advertising, requiring that effective messages
are communicated only by creating compelling content, or by slipping the
message into an email which purports to be something it is not.
As an educated professional, surely you are aware of contemporary
marketing research, but do you explain these things to your clients?
>Besides, "junk" SnailMail kills trees, which can NOT be said
>for "junk" Email. It's time to "wake up and smell the Java".
Putting a "green" spin on the issue still doesn't protect consumers from
the costs associated with downloading junk email. If you want to be
purely rational, surely you recognize that a far less renewable resource,
petroleum-derived energy, is wasted by junk email. ;) No junk mail of
any kind is the greenest solution available to the sincerely interested.
>P.S. Attached is a list of "comments" regarding HipCrime and
> its ActiveAgent. Notice that your opinion has been
> expressed by many others. Also note that the opposite
> view appears more often. I guess it's true what they
> say: "opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one".
You would do well to read Judith Martin. And Edward Tufte as well: I
suspect your list of comments is edited to support your view; the list at
my congressperson's office is significantly longer in the other direction.
- Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Software Tools for SuperCard, Director, HyperCard, OMO, and more....
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