At 10:34 AM 6/19/00 +0100, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
>
>Jeffrey@??? said:
>> I am more than surprised that you don't conceal the addresses of your
>> list members. General privacy concerns suggest that you should. Or
>> have I misunderstood?
>
>An argument could be made under EU Data Protection Law that to expose
>your subscribers list is leaking personal data and hence an offence
>under that law. Certainly I am might displeased that one of my useful
>(ie non spam trap addresses appears to have leaked to a spammers list
>and I am getting unmissable offers that I would rather miss not to
>mention the negative effect that has on my productivity).
As long as all members are made aware when they join, I don't see the
problem. And the EU regulations are very heavy handed and in many cases
rather stupid, just look at the Internet laws that France is about to pass
in parliament at the end of June, basically that all subscribers must reveal
their identity to their ISP (the onus being on the ISP to see that
compliance is achieved and they are liable under the law), and that the ISP
are responsible for all traffic through their machines, even if it's only
transient. Those are crazy rules. Look also at the Halliday/Altern affair
also in France about a year ago, if ever a crazy court ruling was ever heard
this was the one.
>The UK data protection office have made if clear that people's email
>addresses *are* personal data and so need to have care taken to protect
>privacy and that they must only be used for the purposes for which they
>were obtained etc etc. I understand that for companies there is going
>to be some form of requirement for US companies to honour EU data
>protection legislation.
I hope the US will resist this attack on freedom of action. In Marilyn's
case she is not the one to decide whether the addresses are visible or not,
the whole list has to agree. It's her machine, and she set up the list, but
she doesn't run it, we do, and if we want our addresses to remain visible,
they will remain visible. That's democracy, and the EU or the UK have no
jurisdiction over our list.
In our case, visibility is also our protection. If deliberate.com goes down
tomorrow, we can restart the day after somewhere else, but without knowing
our addresses we're as good as dead.
John
>
> Nigel.
>--
>[ - Opinions expressed are personal and may not be shared by VData - ]
>[ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@??? ]
>[ Phone: +44 1423 850000 Fax +44 1423 858866 ]
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