Howard wants to spam like America, too.
I bet you John Howard read the article saying that the US was the top spam sending country and decided that Australia needed to up it’s game and send more spam.
Has he even started his own personal spamming campaign so he can be even more like America?
Seriously, big kudos to the first political party that comes out and says it will change the anti-spam laws to remove the exemption for political parties. Who is it going to be?
The US also used to suffer terribly from telemarketing - just about every night, my phone would ring right around 7:30pm, and I would be greeted by the familiar pause, then the voice of someone from the deep south mangling the pronunciation of my name. Now, Telemarketers to a certain extent were _protected_ by the law, and as long as they didn’t call you back after you asked them not to, there was nothing the government could do. The problem is, that you couldn;t pre-emptively tell _every_ telemarketer that you didn’t want to be called.
So, the government set up a “do not call” list. Anyone can subscribe their phone number to the list, and there were big fines put in place for any unsolicited phone call to such a number. It worked a treat, the number of telemarketing calls I receive dropped down to virtually none.
The only unfortunate part was that, for whatever political reasons, there were some “exceptions” granted (aren’t there always???) One was non-profits, political, and government services - so I still get calls from the police and fire-department scouting for cash - although no political party has been silly enough to call me yet! Another was that companies you subscribe to can still call, such as your cable and phone company, but once you ask them once not to call again, there are heavy fines if they do.
So, I’d say an extremely sensible and successful solution to that horrendous form of privacy invasion, and a signafigant source of annoyance in my life has been removed. Of course, by its very nature the internet is far less regulated than the phone system, and we have to be careful that spam-reduction laws don’t get railroaded and become internet-censorship laws. But given the success of the anti-telemarketing laws, I have relatively high confidence that the US will crack down on spam in the next year or two.
Hi Chris,
Our spam laws aren’t too bad, apart from the political party exemption. There are some signs that they are starting to have an impact.
We just have to hope that the major parties don’t go there, and spam us all during the election campaign. Howard starts the ‘race to the bottom’ as usual by starting to spam. ALP, control yourselves, don’t let yourselves go there!
I read a report today that quoted the public servant responsible for drafting the laws. He said the exemptions were intended to protect MPs who sent legitimate emails to their constituents — but not bulk spam campaigns. Howard can’t be taken seriously if he says he’ll close the loophole, so we’ll have to wait and see if Labor’s prepared to. I hope they are.
“race to the bottom”, an apt phrase.
we might just be heading for a lifestyle similiar to what russian citizens in the 1950’s had to endure.Total government control over every aspect of citizens lives.