News
Contributed by: Aurelija Skurvydaite
Date: January 20, 2009
The mails were sent in the first week in January, a fortnight after Ryan signed into law new regulations that allow for fines of up to €250,000 to be levied against businesses who are found to be send unsolicited e-mails and text messages. A formal complaint was sent to the commissioner by a number of technology bloggers who received unrequested e-mails about a Green party competition. The Green party email, promoting the launch of a viral video competition, was sent to more than 20 technology bloggers and journalists. Although the e-mails were not individually addressed and had not been requested by the recipients, the Green party claims the messages were not spam. Here you can see a screenshot of a sample email:
Michele Neylon, a blogger who writes regularly about technology issues, was so enraged by the email that he filed an official complaint with the Data Protection Commissioner. "I've never signed up for a newsletter from any of the Irish political parties and I have no connection to the Greens," he said. "The e-mail informed me that I was on a mailing list, but I never asked to be put on one. It also didn't give me an option to remove myself from the list. It wasn't addressed to me personally. It was sent to a number of other people who didn't ask for it. So this was spam, there is no other way to look at it." It's worth remembering that this isn't the kind of spam that many of us receive on a regular basis. It's not trying to sell you potions to improve your performance in the bedroom, or informing you that you have inherited a small fortune from Western Africa, or asking you to click on the link to watch a sex video of a nubile female film star. But it is still a nuisance if you haven't asked to be sent it. And the lack of information about how one should unsubscribe from future mailings only makes things worse. |
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Ireland's Green Party has been forced to express their sincere apology for sending out unsolicited emails promoting a viral video competition to technology bloggers within weeks of new anti-spam legislation being introduced by the Republic's minister for communications, Eamon Ryan.
User Comments
If it was sent to a list of people who didn't sign up to be on that list, it was spam. That's the definition.
The courts have rightly found spamming to be illegal conversion of assets. It's a criminal offense in Australia. But more importantly to Greens, it compels forced labor by the recipient with no benefit. There's a word for that, slavery. And it's unsustainable: if everyone were allowed to do it, the email system would immediately become completely unusable. Greens should understand that. I've thrown one Green organization off my service for spamming, in ten years, and turned away several more who disagreed with the policy.
I expect the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to throw out Michele's complaint.
I explained that point at length in several posts. Please correct your headline.