John D. Pritchard wrote:
>
>Resolved: "Any form of unsolicited advertising is simply wrong"
>
>this position is easily justified in the advertising context by
>noting that the internet provides for narrow casting which obviates
>junkie-mail. narrow casted hits have orders of magnitude more
>advertising value than others.
>
>unsolicited email will not last.
Trying to keep this from getting too off-topic, but I think it's important
to make a distinction between "unsolicited" and "junkie" ... remember,
narrow-casting can be unsolicited, and not all unsolicited is junk. Just as
one example, I'm very involved in the independent film industry, and I
frequently get "unsolicited" email announcements about film festivals, film
festival submission dates, and the like. Most of the time, I find this
"unsolicited email" quite un-junkie ... it is, after all, a topic I'm quite
interested in.
Also, many of the "narrow casting" programs and really just "unsolicited
marketing" ... they just hope they've given me the right questions to keep
me from hating the email I get. In other cases (such as PostMaster Direct)
you sign up for the lists you want, they pump whatever shit through them
they want anyway, and you can't remove yourself from lists. This is an
example of "narrow casting"+"junk email", even though it's "solicited".
I think the key problem that most people object to is "bulk untargeted"
email (or even "bulk poorly-targeted" email.) It's the foot-powder ads and
multi-level marketing scams that send us the email that drive us crazy ...
And also, just for a reality check here, even though there is a law against
unsolicited fax advertisements, my business still gets them all the time
(from all kinds of crappy places like "comedy clubs" and "office supply
stores"). Yes, it's supposed to be illegal ... do I take the time to file a
grievances against each junk fax that comes in? No. Do I send a FAX to their
telephone company complaining (the way we would in to an internet service
provider via email)? No.
Even if the "unsolicited fax" law is extended to include email, it's not
going to make unsolicited email go away (if anything, the spam-permitting
servers will just move outside of the United States to muddy jurisdiction or
skirt liability entirely.)
Brian
-- -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ + Brian Clark (President, GlobalMedia Design - Orlando/NYC)- - http://www.radzone.org/gmd/ 407.657.8990 + +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- _________________________________________________ This messages was sent by the robots mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to robots-request@webcrawler.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the body. For more info see http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html