Ken Yap wrote: > > The Australian Consumers Association are conducting a campaign against the > proposed "opt-out" spam provisions that are currently being recommended to > the feral govt. > > Support the ACA's "opt-in" preference at > > http://203.166.10.91/forums/forums.exe?14@^[email protected] > Here is the letter I submitted in addition to my vote if anyone is interested in emulating: Dear Policy maker, Please take into consideration the opinions of long term users and administrators of internet services with regard to policy on SPAM and work towards an "opt-in" policy where businesses are not allowed to send email unless consumers have chosen to receive it from them. Unlike junk postal mail, you pay for downloading unwanted spam. Also, the contents are oftem (usually in my experience) offensive: perhaps including links to porn sites or shonky get-rich-quick schemes. I would like to point out that a number of government schools, including the one attended by my own children were recently the target of an unthinking porn spammer. The government paid (through its arrangement with the internet service provider) for this mail to be delivered! This is clearly stupid. Spam affects the performance of the Internet. Bulk mailouts increase Web traffic, slowing servers and disrupting the day-to-day business of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This means we have to pay more for Internet access and put up with slower connections. If the government were to be truely inovative it might even consider regulating (based on some kind of opt-in principle) the use of banner advertisements on web pages. While school ISPs actively block inappropriate web sites they cannot selectively filter banner adds. Some of these adds, appearing on regular internet pages, are already starting to border on being offensive in their content. At the very least they add considerably to the size and download time for web pages. As a result, many more knowledgable users configure their systems to block all banner adds (at least as many as they can catch). This is counter productive to advertisers and perhaps a problem for both service providers who are dependent on advertising revenue and businesses attemting to engage in legitimate ecommerce. I believe a partial solution to all of the above problems starts with an opt-in policy for email advertising material. Yours faithfully, -- Andrew Dorrell PhD. Research Engineer Canon Information Systems Research Australia Phone: 61 2 9805 2224 1 Thomas Holt Drive, North Ryde, NSW 2113. Fax: 61 2 9805 2929 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux Users Group Mailing List - http://www.slug.org.au To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe in the text
