Seth Godin brings up the dilemma of an anonymous reader who's considering paying $500 for spammers to send a mass mail to avoid getting their mail server blacklisted. Seth's argument of ethics is, of course, correct, but he misses the point that most Acceptable Usage Policies ban this anyway. Even if you don't send the spam yourself, if your URL or business is promoted in any spam (sent through your servers or not) you can face the music. Bear this in mind if you're planning on sending junk to people who didn't ask for it..
The problem is that the government is cynical about enforcing the legislation through the courts. Like the Fax Preference Service, no-one is ever likely to be prosecuted.
Andrew
Posted by: andrew at June 29, 2005 09:32 AMI'm not so worried about people getting prosecuted, but if they are caught paying spammers to promote their product then their ISP is likely to be unimpressed. This is in many AUPs.
Posted by: Peter Cooper at June 29, 2005 01:06 PMAny talk about the legality or even the ethics of this misses the real point to some extent. Marketers have got to stop thinking about 'Campaigns' and start thinking about customers and relationships. We are seeing some of this beginning, but for every step forward you see people like this who really have no idea what the marketing universe looks like here in 2005.
Posted by: Chris Baggott at June 29, 2005 03:27 PMReturn to the homepage.
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