Following the report, ADMA manager of legal and regulatory affairs, Jodie Sangster, defended unsolicited e-mail marketing material in the context of business-to-business marketing.
"I'm not defining it as spam," she told ZDNet Australia.
The association is alarmed at the potential effects the legislation may have on their members and are crying foul, downplaying the benefits of the proposed laws.
"We have content legislation, we have privacy legislation...the people sending this kind of material are already ignoring the current legislation and are unlikely to comply with a stricter policy," Sangster said.
Defending marketing material that doesn't breach content legislation by promoting pornography, fraudulent scams or other dubious offerings, she said e-mail marketing to businesses is perfectly acceptable, and the government should 'butt out'.
"With regard to the business-to-consumer market, there's been a push to move towards an opt-in approach and the direct marketing industry has made a move towards this approach...[but] business-to-business is a different ball game," she said.
"It's not for the government to censor what a business does and doesn't receive," she added.
According to Michael Ward, general manager for spam filtering company SpamTrap, ADMA has 'lost the plot'.
"I think that she's deluding herself if she thinks people are going to accept the unfettered access to inboxes that some marketing companies have," Ward said. "[It's] very different to...looking at advertising when I'm walking down the street, this is taking away productivity...it's a weapon of mass distraction".
The practice may be legal, but that's because nothing has been done yet, he added.
"It may be legal in the absence of legislation, but the minister has quite clearly foreshadowed legislation which will ban untargeted, indiscriminate bulk e-mail sent to recipients that have no previous business relationship [to the sender]," he said, referring to Senator Richard Alston, the minister of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.
A potential explanation for the organisation's response is because of its members reactions, Ward said. "I would expect that ADMA is under siege from some of its members because it has lost this one."
I hate SPAM (fraudelent, trickters emails) as much as anyone but I also hate anything that restricts freedom and restricts a free market place. I can see the Govt will do what it always has done and blindly institute legislation that will take away more freedom and restrict the marketplace.
BUSINESS to BUSINESS email is acceptable and ADMA has a point. The reason we have so much spam these days is becuase over the last few years the Anti-Spam people of the world have attacked so large and far, business has not even been "socially" allowed to start developing practices or proper technology to overcome it. The only ones who have benefited from this is the setup of "black-market" spam enterprises that will always find a way to get past the blocks. If there were legitimate discussions on business-to-business emails marketing rather than Anti spammers crying fowl on any form of Marketing + Email then there would be no need for the black-market - hence there would be a lot less SPAM messages we all recieve today!
How may times in history have we had it where something was banned only to have it more prevailent : re: Alocohol US 1920's?
Email + Marketing is something that needs to be embraced with technology and practicies and kept inside the loop (rather than being pushed out) then it will be easier for us all to control.