I never knew we were so well represented with experts on the Spam Act.
From the government's "Spam Act: A practical guide for business", I
have determined the following (it's been too wet to go birding, and I
have had to stay local as support crew for my money grabbing leech on
society - Sophie - to take part in a charity walk as subterfuge to
extort sponsorship with unsolicited demands for money off her
Facebook friends. The shame. Otherwise I could have done something
more worthy. Like flying to Broome....)
Inferred Consent:
"when an addressee has conspicuously published their electronic
address. In such a case the
Spam Act permits commercial electronic messages to be sent to the
addressee, if the message
relates to the addressee’s published employment function or role. If
a plumber advertises their
email address, it is okay to send them offers of work or of plumbing
supplies, but not to send
an offer unrelated to their work, such as cheap pharmaceuticals. If
the published address is
accompanied by a statement saying that it should not be used for such
messages, such as the
words “no spam”, then it cannot be used to infer consent to a message
being sent;
Now, it might be a bit of a long shot determining 'role' as 'birder',
but I think there is sufficient scope for a clever lawyer to make a
successful argument. Especially when a couple of the most vocal
people on this thread have some sort of formal role in our birding
organisations.
Having an 'existing relationship' appears to be useful and the
following are suggested as appropriate forms of existing relationship:
"- subscribers to a service;
- registered users of online services;"
As to obtaining peoples email addresses:
"Lists generated manually (for example by reviewing websites) are not
prohibited. However,
if addressees have included a statement adjacent to their electronic
address indicating the
addressee does not wish to receive commercial messages, this must be
respected."
Russell has said that the Biding-Aus database is not accessible and
that the email addresses must have been manually collected. And I for
one don't have anything alongside my name indicating I do not wish to
receive commercial messages. Our email addresses are available from
the Birding-Aus website, archives, and the emails Mark will have
received from us via the Birding-Aus list that we are co-subscribers
to. So if Balangara manually picked our names, based on a review of
the Birding-Aus website, that would appear to be ok.
There are a number of other prescriptions of the act - clearly
identifying who you are, where you got the email address from and
providing a means to unsubscribe - that Balangara appear to have
complied with. There may be others they have not, I've only skimmed
it not checked it line by line (I'm not that sad, yet!)
I still believe that while the approach might be a bit rough around
the edges and not fully compliant with the Act, that it is due to
naivety not malice on Mark's part. I'd rather we didn't judge him
based on the mean spirited assumptions of some forum members.
mjh
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