20Apr 06
Spam Act prosecution will echo
Posted by Steven Deare @ 15:50 3 comments
The first prosecution under the Spam Act last week may seem like nothing more than a single renegade marketeer being shut down. But it isn't...
I can tell you from first hand experience the decision has implications for more organisations than just Wayne Mansfield's Clarity1.
A couple of years ago I attended one of Mansfield's e-marketing seminars for a story I was writing on the Spam Act.
As an e-marketeer, Mansfield has had a fair influence on the industry. His national seminars have attracted attendees from government agencies, universities, schools and large companies -- he claimed to have 20,000 attendees in one year alone.
Mansfield's seminars have also driven interest in his "The Maverick Spirit" e-marketing advice products.
The Spirit homepage ominously carries the Francis Bacon quote: "If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must expect to employ methods never before attempted".
At the time I sat listening to Mansfield lecture attendees on his interpretation of the then-pending Spam Act legislation, including how you could still mail to e-mail addresses harvested before the Spam Act and not be in breach of the law.
This turned out to be a fallacy which the then-ACA (Australian Communications Authority) tried to point out.
Here were a range of public and private organisations operating in Australia, actively taking advice from someone that is now a convicted spammer.
This can only lead me to assume that many of these organisations will suddenly be reviewing just how closely they've been following Mansfield's advice.
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I find it interesting that the ACMA, the supposed organisation responsible for enforcing the Spam Act went to the trouble of putting software on their site to let you forward spam emails to them from australian businesses to automate the process, or submit complaints.
Shame the complaint system dosen't actually work...