Dissenting Views

[kevin_standlee]

Some of you may recall that a couple of days ago I discussed Montreal's reminder to its pre-supporters that it's time to vote and how one person declared it spam. At that time, I wrote several replies to madfilkentist, who has seen fit to not unscreen or reply to two of them. Given that he has posted new entries since then, I can only assume that he has no plans to ever clear or reply to them. It has been three days, so I'm going to post my replies here so someone can actually see them, even if he doesn't want to acknowledge them.

Reply #1, in response to a reply from madfilkentist:

You're wrong. I've gone into much more detail on my own LJ about why you're wrong.

Yes, I've been around the internet a while. I know about these things. I know that if I give a bid or convention my contact information, I'm telling them that they can contact me. In fact, I want them to contact me. That makes every contact from them solicited. I see nothing at all in such transactions that limits e-mail contacts to discussions of the financial purchase of the membership itself, as you obviously do. But then, I'm obviously not nearly as fannish as you are. And I wouldn't take that as a compliment if I were you.

I'll as you right here the question I asked over there: Pretend you're running a Worldcon bid. The by-mail voting deadline is so close that sending printed pieces of paper through the postal mail is too slow. How do you contact your supporters and remind them that it's time to vote? Remember that a whole bunch of your supporters really do not understand this whole voting process at all.

Reply #2, an afterthought to the first reply:

Actually, I will also pose the case that I cited on my own LJ. Assume for the sake of argument that you purchased a table in the current Worldcon's dealers' room. As part of this, you signed up for the dealers' room announcements list, where the DR coordinator sends out information about the dealer's room.

The DR coordinator then posts a message to you (and obviously, all of the other dealers) saying, "Our Worldcon has the following opportunities for advertising in our publications and at the convention. You might want to buy an ad to try and attract more people to your table. If so, see [address] to purchase advertising." By your standard, is this "spam" or not?

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Unsolicited mass e-mail = spam. It doesn't have to be from Russia, and it doesn't have to be a scam.

If I sign up for a dealers' room announcement list, I expect dealers' room announcements. That's what I'm soliciting you to send me. This is something else.

"Existing business relationship" is so much bull. You once bought something from somebody, they use that as an excuse to bombard you with ads for the rest of your life. It's spam.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can see the justification for the "existing business relationship" rule. Here's an application from the case cited:

The convention plans to include a list of dealers in the pocket program, with a map showing where each dealer is. The pocket program editor has the bright idea of including the dealer's web site address as part of the listing. But the dealer room form hadn't included "web site address" as a field on the dealer application. So out goes an e-mail to the dealers explaining what the con plans and asking dealers to send their web site address (if applicable) to the DR manager and PP editor by thus-and-such a date.

Based on our experience in Glasgow, I expect that in a population size of a typical Worldcon dealers' room, you'll find at least one dealer who considers this request totally unreasonable and that it should never have been asked in the first place and declares the mere request to be spam, because the dealers' room list is solely for information about when dealers should be setting up their tables.

It's the very fact that things are not black-and-white that leads to things like "existing business relationship" rules.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

But the dealers' listing in the pocket program is directly relevant dealers' room business. There's no need to cite an "existing business relationship" to explain the relevance of this. And if a retailer needs to tell people who've special-ordered an upcoming product that it's been delayed, there's no need to cite an "existing business relationship" either. It's the actual customers for the actual product under discussion.

No, the use of the phrase "existing business relationship" is a pretty good sign that you want to send spam to your past customers. And trying to sell ads to people whom you only theorize might be interested only because they happen to be your dealers, if you send them indiscriminate e-mail, is spam. Like Justice Stewart, I know it when I see it.

The fact that some people might object to totally legitimate messages doesn't prove that less legitimate messages aren't spam, any more than the fact that some people won't object to the most blatant spam proves that legitimate messages are spam.