AU small business defends Yellow Pages "spam" - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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AU small business defends Yellow Pages "spam"

By Patrick Gray, 0
October 03, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/AU-small-business-defends-Yellow-Pages-spam-/0,139023166,120279318,00.htm

A small Australian Internet service provider (ISP) has defended its practice of sending unsolicited commercial e-mails to addresses listed in the Yellow Pages.

The company, ViewQwest, claims the content of its e-mail advertisements are not offensive and the company's managing director, Ivan Hurwitz, says a working opt-out scheme and targeted marketing tactics employed by his company makes the practice legitimate.

"We're sending information that's generally relevant to the market we're targeting," he told ZDNet Australia . "We have a working, strong opt out service and I can prove it."

However Klaus Boehme, a partner with the Cairns-based ISP Internet Information Group, says that ISPs should know better. "If they want to be in this business they should know better - it's not a simple mistake, it's obviously spam," he said.

Boehme flatly rejects ViewQwest's assertion that sending unsolicited bulk e-mail is akin to telemarketing activity. "You can choose not to have telemarketing by having a silent number... you pick up an e-mail and affectively you've paid for it -- it's in your inbox, it's wasting your time and you're likely to get another one from them," he said.

Whilst he admits the content of the e-mail is fairly "clean", Boehme says that's not the point. "The basic rules of allowing unsolicited commercial e-mail by law in the U.S. suggest that they do need to have a valid return address and a valid opt-out address. So effectively they have followed the 'rules' of spam, but they are still spamming... In general, mainly because it is so out of hand, is the reason that it is frowned upon."

ViewQwest is likely to re-examine its policy in regard to unsolicited e-mail when proposed anti-spam legislation is passed by the federal government. "Once it passes we'll need to re-examine things," Hurwitz said. "I don't think it's morally wrong, and if it's not today criminally wrong... I just think it's a mountain out of a mole hill."

"We're a very small player," he added. "We probably won't do it again."