Whose Side Is Microsoft On?

from the go-get-'em dept

Yesterday Microsoft made lots of news by filing lawsuits against 15 spammers. However, the San Jose Mercury News is taking them (and AOL and Yahoo and others) to task for saying they're anti-spam while doing other things to encourage spam. Specifically, they complain that Microsoft (and many others) are supporting legislation that would legalize spam in many forms, so that they can spam their own users (or sell their names). It appears that many of these companies are against spam only as far as their own corporate marketing departments. Companies that were truly against spam would realize that any spam is a nuisance to their customers, and would do anything to support their right to be left alone.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Thom Kozik, 18 Jun 2003 @ 10:48am

    Get real, MS's too easy of a target...

    While it seems everyone loves to hate Microsoft these days, they have a point here. I admittedly subscribe to several of their online newsletters, which come as email each month - hardly "spam". The crap they're fighting against is the multiple body-part enlargement missives that invade our mailboxes each day through ABUSE - not permission marketing.

    If you find you don't want one of Microsoft's newsletters or offers polluting your inbox anymore, you can easily opt out, and they *honor* that request (I know, I've gone through it). Try saying the same for those sh*theads who send out barnyard sex, credit card offers and all the rest of the crap, sometimes to randomly attempted addresses.

    I wish Microsoft luck - and if I were a spammer, I'd be worried - MS has plenty of cash to pay for better lawyers than spammers can afford, that's for certain.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Patrick, 18 Jun 2003 @ 1:04pm

    Debra Bowen and Microsoft(?!)

    From the Mercury News article:

    "The California bill that Microsoft opposes, a total ban on spam written by Sen. Debra Bowen, is a critical test of how far legislators are willing to go to battle the spam scourge. Armed with a stack of amendments, Microsoft caused a vote on the bill to be postponed by two weeks."

    I for one am sick of getting spam from Sen Bowen--she must have an in with Microsoft for them to go to these lengths.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.