SMS Spammer Pleads Unfairness

from the missing-the-point dept

Wed, Apr 6th 2005 2:59am — Mike Masnick

An online car buying service in Australia was fined this week for sending out a ton of SMS text spam to mobile phones. The company apparently went through classified ads in newspapers to collect phone numbers, which they then spammed. While the company in question initially apologized for the spamming and said it was an "honest mistake," it's beginning to sound like that apology wasn't so sincere. The company is now hitting back that the anti-spam law is unfair to smaller companies, because it takes away this particular way to annoy people -- while larger companies can still use telemarketers to annoy users in a different (but similar) way. Of course, all this really suggests is that Australia needs to do a better job stopping unwanted telemarketing also. The spammers have clearly missed the point. It doesn't matter whether others are allowed to do similarly annoying practices. It's that such unsolicited interruptions are a real nuisance to people no matter who they're from or what format they happen to arrive in.

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schleifnet, 6 Apr 2005 @ 7:41am

actually the problem is billing...
most cel co's seem to have so sort of pay per sms system setup, this is why sms spam sux so much, not only does it steal time but it steals money from the consumer who gets a limited number of msgs a month or has a limited amount of characters per month...
that is what is wrong with sms spam and using your paid minutes is what is wrong with cell telemarketing...
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Michael Pate, 6 Apr 2005 @ 8:46am

Unfair How?
If a company has a big enough marketing budget, they can advertise during the Superbowl. Most companies can't afford that. It isn't unfair, it's just life.

These people need to work on their argument a bit more because it sounds like something they made up on the playground in elementary school.
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