Shock horror! HR firm breaches spam act
The Human Capital magazine recently reported that "Melbourne based HR firm Astute Corporation, known as Astute People Solutions, received the official warning after numerous complaints were made in light of its heavy use of marketing emails. The act states that marketing emails cannot be sent to people without their consent."
I don't know whether we're talking a few errant emails or hundreds of thousands, but I do feel it is ridiculous that one Australian company cannot send an unsolicited email to another Australian company without breaking the law.
The real crime is the massive environmental cost of paper based marketing campaigns! (from Jul 08 to Jun 09, Australian organisations sent 461,000,000 pieces of direct mail).
It's hard to know whether our spam act was simply a knee jerk reaction by the previous Government or whether it was a calculated move to force business to use our outdated and overpriced postal service, which of course is a source of revenue for the Government. But either way it is bad policy which harms small business in Australia, by making harder to compete with overseas competitors who don't have the same constraints.
Furthermore, forcing companies to use "snail mail" for marketing is the ultimate hypocrisy given that we are supposedly trying to reduce emissions.
Consider the total carbon footprint of a postal marketing campaign, from cutting down the trees to the delivery of the printed material to end recipient. Then compare that with the environmental damage done by an email marketing campaign. Then there's the waste paper generated.
The current Australian Spam Act should be abolished and replaced with something akin to the US Can Spam Act which is a much better thought out policy, promoting fair and responsible use of email for marketing.
