20 REASONS

TO SUPPORT THE CULTURE COMMITTEE AMENDMENT ON ARTICLE 7 OF THE E-COMMERCE DIRECTIVE

From EuroISPA

CONSUMERS HATE JUNK E-MAIL

1. 22,000 people from around Europe have signed an online petition to call for unsolicited e-mail to be prohibited.
   
   
2. 10% of unsolicited e-mail is pornographic. (Source: Computing Services and Software Association). Pornographic email is often misdirected to minors and people at the workplace who have done nothing to indicate a desire to receive it.
   
   
3. 68% of US Internet users say that they find unsolicited e-mail useless and bothersome. (source: idem)
   
   
4. Two thirds of US Internet users support legislation to prevent the widespread use of unsolicited e-mail as a marketing tool. (source: idem)
   
   
   INDUSTRY HATES JUNK E-MAIL
   
   
5. "The ‘free" distribution of unwelcome or misleading messages to thousands of people is an annoying and sometimes destructive use of the Internet’s unprecedented efficiency" – Bill Gates
   
   
6. The Internet Direct Marketing Bureau has endorsed an opt-in policy that is designed to give users greater control over the flow of pitches that pour into email boxes.
   
   
7. Unsolicited commercial communications cost UK business £5,000,000,000 per year (source: Novell).
   
   
8. It is unacceptable to legitimise a practice that permits advertisers to invite themselves to use Internet provider infrastructure and consumer phone bills to pay for their marketing.
   
   
9. Unsolicited e-mail is already banned in the Netherlands and Germany.
   
   
10. Opt-out has been shown to be unworkable in the USA, proven by the large amount of unsolicited e-mail still circulating.
    
    
    OPT-OUT WILL NOT WORK
    
    
11. Direct marketing associations cannot produce reliable industry self-regulation because the costs of sending commercial e-mail are so low that most junk mailers will not need to be association members.
    
    
12. 90% of commercial e-mail in the USA is unsolicited, producing a huge burden on Internet networks (source: Computing Services and Software Association)
    
    
13. The cost structure of junk e-mail is fundamentally different from physical junk mail, which is why junk e-mail must be legislated for differently.
    
    
14. E-mail marketing is a trans-national issue, it cannot be dealt with effectively on a nation-state level.
    
    
15. E-Mail address "harvesting" programs are cheap and can produce mailing lists of hundreds of thousands of addresses at almost no cost.
    
    
16. Article 7A of the Data Protection Directive, states that "Member States shall provide that personal data may be processed only if the data subject has unambiguously given his consent".
    
    
17. "Tagging" of e-mail (like #/# in the subject heading) does nothing to resolve the issue of costs imposed on Internet providers and disadvantages new Internet users who are not aware of how to set up a filter on their e-mail client.
    
    
18. Under a simple opt-out system, the ease with which new lists are created means that new lists would be created more quickly than consumers could remove themselves from the lists.
    
    
    OPT-IN WILL WORK
    
    
19. Opt-in gives consumers control over where they are sent e-mails from, thereby increasing the likelihood of their opening the commercial e-mails they receive.
    
    
20. Opt-in provides marketers with clear information on how many consumers are interested in their product.