[epub] Re: laws for e-marketing&target area questions (worldwide)

[Ross Hall <ross.hall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bottom line is that in reality most of these anti-spam laws are pretty 
close to useless. They are nice in theory, but the practice is 
something else....

Let's consider a person resident in California who receives spam from 
someone in Nigeria. What are they going to do?

They might ring up their local enforcement agency and complain. So what 
next? In Nigeria it might not be illegal to send UCE, in which case who 
is going to take control of the case? A state that wants to protect 
what it sees as a legitimate business practice or a state that wants to 
protect its citizens?

Assuming California decides to put its foot down - then what? The 
person concerned isn't in their jurisdiction, so what are they going to 
do? An international arrest warrant, in which case we have to ask 
whether it will ever be served.

Or maybe the person will decide to sue. Assuming they even win their 
case in the California courts what does this actually achieve? How will 
they collect their winnings from a business or individual based in 
another country, who might not even accept the jurisdiction of a 
foreign court over their citizens.

So the best we can hope for is a spammer is stupid enough to set up 
business in California and then be arrested for it! If they are that 
stupid they deserve all they get!

In the EU things are a little different in that many of these data 
protection laws that govern spamming allow a citizen to sue someone in 
their own state. That means if a German spams me in Britain I should be 
able to sue them in a British court. And of course this creates its own 
problems!

As for burden of proof I believe that "innocent until proven guilty" 
should hold true, if only to ensure consistency with justice in 
general. I always act in best faith, and have the original subscription 
requests and TCP/IP addresses going back a couple of years or more.

Provided you can demonstrate that you always act in good faith then I 
believe a reasonable court should side in favour of the business. 
Certainly I think that businesses who are serious about this side of 
emarketing will now be turning their backs on so-called "opt-in" lists 
and associated marketing companies. The risks are too high!

One thing I do believe we should be looking to is ending the ridiculous 
situation of "once subscribed, always subscribed." I am in the process 
of preparing a "please rejoin the mailing list" mailing which I intend 
on sending out every 6 to 12 months to keep my list clean.

I know my ego says that I should love to have tens of thousands of 
people on my mailing list, but in reality I'd rather have 1 who reads 
the damned thing than a 100 who just bin it!

I've already being doing something similar with another list I run on a 
3 strikes or out basis. If the subscriber does not click on the link to 
get the content 3 times in a row they're removed from the list, with an 
appropriate message. This has worked reasonably well so far, but needs 
some refining and might be a method I employ more widely in the future.

The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is the anti-spam laws will 
have a limited impact on spam in the short-term. For those of us who 
already actively and ethically manage our lists then I don't see much 
will change for us.



Ross ;-))

--
Ross Hall,
Independent business advisor and troubleshooter

+44 (0)20 8902 0618
28 Dalmeny Close, Wembley, HA0 2EU, United Kingdom
http://www.rosshall.co.uk



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