The Pitch: Email harassment versus the right to communicate

By JOHN BISHOP*

It's difficult to defend spam, not least because it annoys so many people. But plans to outlaw it need careful consideration.

Everyone with an internet connection spends at least some time each day deleting unwanted messages.

But what is new here? The issues about spam are the same issues we face with other forms of communications.

An Internet Society workshop agreed spam email, text messages and instant messages should be outlawed, but not telemarketing calls, unsolicited faxes and junk mail.

This is illogical. If someone can ring me, fax me or deposit stuff in my letterbox, then why should sending me an email or text message be illegal?

I have not consented to telemarketing calls and faxes nor to junk mail. How can I claim consent is required for one medium but not for another?

Certainly, I can put the "no circulars" sign up on the letterbox, and maybe an electronic form of that administered by ISPs would be appropriate.

My consent to receive telephone calls seems to be implied with my acceptance of the device. There seems no practical method of preventing anyone from calling me.

My only recourse is to hang up and to throw out the fax or junk mail.

Remarkably, a Roy Morgan Research survey showed that 56 per cent of people keep circulars for between one and four weeks.

I haven't seen any similar studies of what we do with offers over the internet, but it would not be surprising to find that many of the messages are useful to some people.

Clearly, the endless ads for penis enlargement, Viagra and Ciallis, cheap software and girl-next-door spycams simply clog up the in box.

No one wants them. But why should a real estate agent selling a house in a nearby street be prevented from advising me and my neighbours of that electronically?

What about a mass email appealing for accommodation for visitors to a major sporting or cultural event when city hotels and motels are full?

If you hand over your business card, or publish your email address, then be prepared to get messages, just as you get addressed and unaddressed mail in your letterbox.

So how do we distinguish the stuff no one wants from the stuff that some might be interested in?

Here's my suggestion. The sender has to have reasonable grounds for believing that the recipient could have an interest in the message, otherwise it's illegal.

"Reasonable grounds" might be that the recipient is in a profession with an interest in the subject matter or the products being offered, or they qualify on some other factor of age, gender, location or the like.

Associate IT Minister David Cunliffe says that what constitutes consent to receive an electronic communication is one of the issues to be tackled in any anti-spam legislation.

That legislation needs to strike a reasonable balance between the right to communicate and market, and the right to live free from harassment and embarrassment each time one opens the in box.

* John Bishop is a writer, trainer and communicator whose regular e-zine on media, marketing and management issues is obtainable from his website.

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