August 18, 2005
A Reader's View: Privacy's More Important Than Marketing
Unsolicited marketing messages that are not spam have become too pervasive and too intrusive.
Reader K.J. Buba responded to my recent blog that tries to tie together the need for targeted e-mail marketing with the spam and fraud phenomena which have rendered mass-marketing on the Internet into an almost useless thing (see Strange Bedfellows). Mr. Buba feels that any such mass marketing, whether by telephone, Fax, or e-mail, is an invasion of his right to privacy and calm in his life.
Recently there have been a ton of severe invasions of my privacy. Where I live in Indiana we have a state "No Call" law which is being challenged by a consortium of Banks suggesting that they have an 'implied business relationship' with me (their customer) because I have an account with one, or more, of them.
They want to be able to call me on my phone with whatever 'paid pitch' they might sell to any of a thousand telemarketers! My response is, "No Thanks!"
There is an insidious high court ruling suggesting that Fax marketing is just fine, but I disagree! And, the key word in your article which seems to evade detection, even though it is more or less falling out of your mouth, is unsolicited.
For example, I receive the Messaging Pipeline Newsletter because I choose to receive the Messaging Pipeline Newsletter. In other words, I solicited that recurring e-mail message.
Now, my position is this: I pay for telephone service, and it is provided for me because I pay for it. I expect that if telemarketing organizations wish to use the service that I pay for to communicate with me, they should pay for my service, not me. They should also pay for my time, but that is another story)!
The idiot(s) that satisfied some lobbyist by ruling that unsolicited Fax marketing is "just fine" should be prepared to set up some sort of refund office. Then I could bundle up all the unsolicited Fax messages I receive and deliver them to the refund office where I would be reimbursed for the connect time, paper, and ink cartridges they consumed!
Again, like the telephone, my investment in a Fax machine is not made so that Fax marketing organizations can contact me! E-mail falls into the same thought process! I have an investment in equipment to provide me with a service! The time that it takes to delete -- most often without even reading or previewing -- unsolicited e-mail messages is substantial! And this does not even address the issue of overflowing my ISPs e-mail volume limit!
In your defense of the e-mail paradigm you miss entirely the meaning of unsolicited, and that is a damned shame!
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