On Wed, 24 Aug 2005, Juha Saarinen wrote:
Craig Whitmore wrote:
Microsoft is lobbying for existing business relationships to be recognised in the new law. Businesses may have customer relationships that pre-date the law, but in order to use those, a company would have to seek permission from everyone once the legislation comes into effect. For instance, lots of people sign up for things and forget about it - under the proposed law, companies sending messages to them would incur big penalties unless they somehow get their customers to opt in.
I understood one of the concerns to be that MS wanted the "PEBR" status to supersede a previously-stated desire that the person or entity NOT be contacted by the advertising company with advertising material in the future. That is, a person ticks the "I do not want to receive future advertising from XYZ Widgets Ltd or their business partners" box on some mailer, and MS now want that stated desire to be ignored because e-mail is not the same as dead tree advertising. Is that an incorrect interpretation? I've not actually read the legislation, it's just an objection that I've seen raised elsewhere. -- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer."