definition of spam

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Seb said

If you send it to =one= person who you really believe might be interested, and who you are fairly sure isn't going to complain about you doing so, you should be OK. It's when they =complain= that you are spamming them that you are in trouble, not when you do it.

So you're saying there's no defence against the law that you believed your commercial solicitation was legitimate? (what is the law in the UK btw, I know of the EU directive, but where's that in UK law?)

Isn't that somewhat troublesome for regular commercial business - how do I place an order, or enquire about any product by email without risk of violating this law?

Jim.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Jim Ley said

IANAL but afaik there is no law in the UK. Not much point, since we can't enforce half the ones we already have.

I doubt enquiring about a product could be interpreted as spamming... it's when you're selling or advertising something that the problem is likely to arise. Any supplier who yelled 'spammer' at their customers would be out of business rather quickly, wouldn't they.

It's not the law you have to worry about anyway, it's your ISP pulling your connection, and I haven't seen that done (except in error) for anything except the worst cases of mass-mailing or nuisance Emailing, or similar.

I think the relevent EU directive is

but I'm not bothering to look in detail right... but I don't know how that's been incorporated into UK law. Jim.