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After reading this report in today's Stuff.co.nz edition it becomes a little hard to tell doesn't it?

On the one hand, Microsoft's lawyers have successfully sued the snot out of US-based spammers and have been working hard to come up with technology-based solutions to the problem of spam -- yet on the other hand, they seem to have problems with NZ's proposed anti-spam legislation.

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While I have some sympathy for comments made by the Microsoft USA exec who flew all the way out here to try and lobby government to make some changes, he blows his credibility to hell and back by saying things like (quotes from the Stuff story):

"businesses ought to be able to send unsolicited e-mail to people even if they are unsure if they have a pre-existing business relationship with them"

"He also wants definitions in the bill changed so that companies would be able to e-mail information about new products and services to customers, even if they had opted out of receiving e-mail about other services they had bought from the company in the past"

Now I don't know about you, but if a company sends me an unsolicited commercial message without my permission then I should have the right to declare that message as spam.

Likewise, if I've opted in to a company's mailings about flat-screen TV offers but later opt out, I most certainly would consider email from the same company trying to flog me a microwave oven or stereo system to be spam.

The fact is that we need strong anti-spam legislation of the type proposed in order to avoid spammers using loopholes to continue their annoying activities. One only has to look at how the flood of US-based spam continues to invade our mailboxes to see how ineffective the USA's CANSPAM Act has actually been -- despite a few major prosecutions.

What I want to know is: why is Microsoft so keen to open up loopholes in NZ's proposed legislation?

Why should we let spammers use the defence of "Oh, we thought we had an existing relationship with the people we spammed" or "but these people had only opted out of our mailing list number 135/C and we used mailing list 135/D".

Perhaps the reality is that Microsoft want to reserve the right to send us *their* spam without running foul of the law.

Since 99% of all PC users are running Microsoft Windows, they could quite legitimately argue that they have the right to assume an existing business relationship with those people -- hence a right to send them "marketing emails" promoting new products or upgrade offers.

Sorry guys -- but spam by any other name would smell as foul.

So what do you think?

Should the government yield to Microsoft's lobbying and turn our anti-spam legislation into just another version of the CAN-SPAM Act?

And what's Microsoft's motivation for wanting our proposed laws weakened like this? Obviously it was important enough for them to send an exec all the way from the USA to pitch their case.

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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