One of my friends got unsolicited email newsletter from his congressperson (he didn’t specify which one), and he doesn’t like it. It’s spam, he says. It is opt-out, but unsolicited nonetheless.
I think that’s missing the point. Although spam is usually defined simply as “unsolicited bulk email”, I tend to think of that in terms of people casting a wide net in hopes of catching a few percent of the recipients. I’d love to get an email newsletter from my representatives.
Still, my friend says it’s all still about sales, and the politician is trying to sell himself. Sure, that’s true, but we’re all selling ourselves every day.
I checked the web sites for my senators and discovered they have opt-in lists, but I wouldn’t have know about them unless I really looked for them. I would have liked a single email saying “You can keep tabs on me by …” or something similar.
I don’t think we should use the spam outrage hysteria to keep our elected officials from reaching us.
What do you think?
They know about email?
I had assumed that most of our elected official had nary a clue about Internet-related technologies. Now, I'll have to go check it out.
Intrusion?
I think spam is all about intrusion. Yes your representative should be able to reach you - at your authority. It's the permission that's the key. While you may not want the hassle of giving that permission, there are a million others who don't want to have to revoke an auto-granted permission.
gov't issue spam
While I don't have a strong opinion about whether UCE is isomorphic with Spam, I thought you might be interested in receiving RSS updates from your elected official at govtrack :-)
Bah
Frankly, if you are so disinterested in your representation as to be offended that your representative sends you mail, I am far too disinterested to care about it.
Intrusion?
How would you ask for permission if you can't contact the person? If it's all about intrusion, do we also limit their ability to come up to us on the street and introduce themselves? I see those as literal intrusion, just like the email was technically spam, but I've also had a handful of people write me to say they never though of checking the web pages of their officials, so it has also done some good.
I agree with you for the most part becauase that's how the world is even if we don't like it. I'd like to get rid of the auto-dialer phones that called me during the election season so I could "hear a pre-recorded message from Senator Kennedy" (even though I don't live in Massachusetts, go figure).
I probably have inconsistent views based on what I consider intrusion.
I already get mail, so why not?
What brian is talking about is an e-mail variant on franking. Franking is the privilege incumbent members of the House and Senate here in the U.S. have of sending a large yet limited number of mailers to constituents, information which is not outright campaign material, without a postal fee. Most customers of the P.O. don't get this privilege, but sending constituent mail is a public good.
What I think brian is asking could alsoi be phrased as this:
Would you allow a limited number of e-mails, sent by your elected officials, not to include campaign materials, to be sent to your e-mail address?
or maybe making this the subject for debate:
Such e-mail should be, by legal definition, not spam--not UCE..