Hi All,
This is a real interesting thread. Firstly to let you know I work in marketing in Australia (outbound) for a large Telco so a large part of my daytime job is dealing with anti spam laws and Do Not Call Registers etc.
I agree with a lot of what is on the thread and you get close to heart of the matter when talking about intent.
With my websites I have been accused of spamming a couple of times once in Craigslist where my attempt lasted maybe 20 minutes before being cast into the abyss as spam.
The critical thing here is what's spam and what's advertising.
As for the thought that if the user gets no benefit then it's spam, I think that's wrong what about keywords and any manipulation of the site to be Google friendly - I wouldn't call that spam.
I would call placing invisible text spam, it's deceptive conduct anyway.
But anyway, in Australia we have quite tough anti-spamming legislation and I think they've got pretty right for a change. I'll paraphrase some of it.
Any message that doesn't meet the following three conditions is defined as spam:
- Consent – the message must be sent with your consent
- Identify – the message must contain accurate information about the person or organisation that authorised the sending of the message
- Unsubscribe – the message must contain a functional 'unsubscribe' facility to allow you to opt out of receiving messages from that source.
Messages do not have to be sent out in bulk to be considered spam. Under Australian law, a single electronic message can also be considered spam.
Australia’s anti-spam legislation – the
Spam Act 2003 - covers email, instant messaging, SMS (text messages) and MMS (image-based mobile phone messaging) messages of a commercial nature. It does not cover faxes, internet pop-ups or voice telemarketing. Telemarketing calls are covered by the
Do Not Call Register.
however....and this is the difference between spam and advertising
If you have inferred consent the message is not legally spam.
Inferred consent - Where consent can be inferred from either:
-
Behaviour/conduct (eg. person has given sender a business card. It is only reasonable to send information that is relevant to their position).
-
Business or other relationship (eg. person has previously dealt voluntarily with the sender before and, on the basis of that existing relationship, can reasonably be assumed by the sender to be prepared to accept messages of the type being sent. The message should be relevant to the particular product purchased and, if announcing a new product, compatible with their previous purchases).
-
"Conspicuous publication" of an electronic address (eg. person publishes their email address on a web site. It is acceptable to use addresses of this nature, but they must be used responsibly by only sending information that is relevant to their position).
so under these definitions to say
HTML Code:
"If the person has never heard of you before and you send them an (unsolicited) email asking them to place a link on their web site going to yours, I think by law and by definition this is spam."
is not actually true and I admit this is how I market to websites and I have been only once been accused of spamming.
So therefore if a person sends an email to a hotel site trying to sell Viagra that's spam, but if he was to be selling hotel industry advertising it is advertising. If the website owner then didn't consent to ongoing emails and they send another email -even if it was the same email - it is then Spam - or illegal anyway.
So it's about intent and also inferred consent by publishing a contact email.
Don't expect everyone to agree but that's the law here.
