15:32 Wed 19 May 2004						REF:611DECR1
								Y/R: Spam Act 2003
TO:	John M HAYDON						Ltr dated 2004/05/06	 
	Executive Director					Rcd date 2004/05/11
	CONSUMER AND UNIVERSAL SERVICE OBLIGATION
	AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATIONS AUTHORITY (ACA) 	
	Level 13				PO Box 13112		cc	Zipworld ISP
	200 Queen Street			LAW COURTS
	MELBOURNE   VIC   3000			MELBOURNE VIC 8010

Dear Mr Haydon
COMPLYING WITH SPAM ACT 2003

Thank you for registered letter dated Thu 06 May 2004 informing us "the ACA has received a
complaint from a member of the public, alleging that your business has sent them an 
unsolicited commercial electronic message ('spam').

This is the response within the 14 days stipulated in your document to that letter signed for 
and collected by myself as the Public Officer of the Open Interchange Consortium [OIC] on 
Tue 11 May 2004. 

A	Management Summary
B	Legal Entity of  OPEN Interchange Consortium
C	Advice received on E-mail and Spam Act 2004
D	OIC E-mail processes
E	Policies and Processes for removing un-subscribes
F	No E-mail policies in organisations receiving e-mails
G	Previous complaints to cause mischief
H	Next Steps

Mr HAYDON we believe that we have the correct policies and processes in place to ensure that 
the OIC complies with the Spam Act 2003.

There have been previous complaints with our ISP by competitors who receive our e-mails.  

The Spam Act 2003 provides them the legal authority to cause further mischief.

If you provide us with the e-mail address of the complainant I personally will ensure that 
the e-mail address is removed from the OIC e-mail contact lists

Thank you
Yours sincerely

STEPHEN GOULD
Public Officer
OPEN INTERCHANGE CONSORTIUM

A	MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
1 Consent: 	The Legal Advice that we have received is that the SPAM ACT 2003 was to provide 
		Consumer (Members of the Public) protection from e-mails soliciting Commercial 
		Business.  

		The OIC is not a Business but a Business Association.  

		Our e-mails are directed to Businesses not to Consumers.  

		The e-mails provided are awareness/education/business e-mails on the 
		"Management Needs to Know" basis for organisations including Government and 
		businesses.

2 Identity:	we comply with the Act

3 Unsubscribe:	we comply with the Act.  However please review the attached details to 
		appreciate the difficulties encountered trying to un-subscribe some business 
		e-mail addresses and whether a person has the authority to unsubscribe a 
		company.

4 	As with most legislation the SPAM Act 2004 requires amendment.  We will be proposing 
	amendments from our own experiences

5	In the past mischief makers and competitors have tried to have our ISP shut down the 
	OIC for SPAM. Please forward me the e-mail address of the Complainant and I will 
	ensure that it is removed from the e-mail list if it can be found


B	LEGAL ENTITY OF THE OPEN INTERCHANGE CONSORTIUM
The OIC is a not-for-profit unincorporated Small & Medium size Enterprise [SME] Association
formed in 1994.   It is not a business or commercially run operation. Most of the work is 
carried out by volunteer members who join the OIC for a number of reasons including:

1 	Attend seminars and events to keep informed of developments in Management and 
	Electronic Information Technology issues

2 	Sponsor events and programmes to promote their own products and services

3 	Tender for new business via the OTMG Tender Information Management Service [TIMS]

4 	Network to submit tender consortium response to business opportunities

5 	promote products and services internationally

Members propose and vote on policies at the Annual General Meetings

Members work together for Submissions to Government Public Consultations eg

1	the 2004 draft Free Trade Agreement, 

2	the 2003 E-commerce Best Practice Model and 

3	1999 E-commerce Public Consultation

One of those policies is to keep members and contacts informed of issues by e-mail hence the 
response in Nov 1999 by OIC members to the Australian Treasury E-commerce Public Consultation  

A number of the recommendations in that response have been adopted by the US Federal CAN-SPAM 
Act 2004 rather than the Australian Spam Act 2003.  

One recommendation included in the US CAN-SPAM Act 2003 was that e-mails contain a code in the 
title of the e-mail to designate what type of e-mail it is eg ADV Advertising.

C	LEGAL ADVICE RECEIVED ON SPAM ACT 2003
The legal advice received on the SPAM ACT 2003 was that it was proposed to stop/limit the 
number of e-mails from business-to-consumer [B2C] whereby commercial businesses were soliciting 
orders from Members of the Public to purchase their product or service.

The Open Interchange Consortium [OIC] is an e-Business Association whereby only a registered 
business can become a member not a Member of the Public.  That member has to be interested in 
Electronic Information Technologies [EIT] and be prepared to mainly use e-mail and the Internet
for Web Registration.

Most of the activities are outsourced to members on a fee-for-service basis or on an e-credits 
basis.

The Legal Advice that we have received is that as the OIC provides events to raise Awareness 
and keep Business Management information of Electronic Information Technology [EIT] issues 
that sending e-mails to businesses contacts and not consumers does not contravene the Spam 
Act 2003.

D	OIC E-MAIL PROCESSES
The OIC does not own the contact lists as members provided a number of services on a membership
fee offset and free-of-fee basis to the OIC including:

a	e-mail lists provided by members for the on-going process of raising awareness of the 
	benefits of Electronic Information Technology [EIT] issues with Business Management.

The OIC policy agreed by members is that on accepting e-mail lists from members:

	1 	The recipients must be commercial companies and not Members of the Public 
		(ie not consumers)

	2 	That the provider of the e-mail list can only sponsor an event but not the
		content of the e-mail which will relate to an EIT or Management issue

	3 	The telephone numbers are retained by the member and are not available to 
		other members

	4 	There is unrestricted use of that e-mail list as it is for mutual benefit

One of the difficulties is making sure that the lists do not contain consumer addresses and we
endeavour to remove all e-mails that are @yahoo.com and @hotmail.com e-mail addresses

b	In addition new lists are regularly added from exhibitors and attendees at IT events.  
	Again every effort is made to ensure that the e-mails are for business-to-business 
	communication and not for business-to-consumer communication

c	OIC Members can commission contact research for a fee for a specific issue on the 
	understanding that any e-mail lists can be utilised by the OIC

E	POLICIES AND PROCESS FOR REMOVING UNSUBSCRIBES
We have had in place for the last 4 years a process from removing "Unsubscribes"
from the weekly e-mail newsletters.

In the "NEXT STEPS" section of each e-mail there is an unsubscribe e-mail address.

Once an unsubscribe e-mail is received it is entered into a speadsheet as a record of an 
unsubscribe e-mail address.

That unsubscribe e-mail address is checked with the list of e-mail addresses and deleted when 
found.

HOWEVER often 10-15% of the weekly unsubscribes cannot be found because:

1 	the sender has changed ISP or e-mail addresses and the old e-mails are re-directed

2 	left the company and someone else receives that left person's e-mail

3	the e-mail goes to a company e-mail eg sales@, info@ etc but the unsubscribe comes from 
	a persons name

We do have in place a process whereby we send an e-mail requesting the identity of other e-mail 
addresses.  Sometimes we do not get a response.

E3 - Do you have other e-mail addresses

	"Hi - we have had considerable problems tracking down your e-mail address to unsubscribe
	 you: event@amvmcm.com.au

	Do you:

	1	have other e-mail addresses ? 
			Please advise other addresses

	2	act as the "catch all" for other people who may have left ?
			Please advise e-mail addresses of people who have left

	3	review the e-mails to a general e-mail address eg sales@, 
			infor@, marketing@ etc ?

		If you do, would you please forward these e-mails to your senior 		
		sales/marketing/Information Technology/business development
		managers as this information is provided to keep management 
		informed on Electronic Information Technology issues that will be 
		relevant to your organisation		

	Thank you"

Every effort is made to ensure that those unsubscribe e-mail addresses are removed before the
next e-mail is sent out the following week.

Unfortunately as we are developing new e-business processes sometimes our systems crash and the 
e-mail system that we uses automatically backs-up to previous e-mail lists hence it is not
unknown for an unsubscribed e-mail to re-appear.

In addition new lists sometimes contain the e-mails of people who have been previously 
unsubscribed

F	E-MAIL POLICIES IN ORGANISATIONS RECEIVING OUR E-MAILS
Most of the recipients companies do not have e-mail policies for unaddressed e-mails.  

Often the catch-all e-mail address is reviewed by a junior person.  These often change jobs. 

Here is an example of the responses to an e-mail asking to unsubscribe and we could not find 
the address

This was the response to the e-mail on the Seminar to review the Australian-USA Free Trade 
Agreement [FTA] with Senator Kate LUNDY Shadow Minister for IT from the National Office of 
Software Engineering Australia which is an Association for over 4,500 Australian Software 
Developers.

As the person involved was the leaving the Association the parting gesture was to request to 
unsubscribe for all  

	From:           	"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" 
	To:             	
	Subject:        	RE: Hi - do you have other e-mail address
	Date sent:      	Thu, 13 May 2004 09:46:54 +1000

	Hi...

	Yes, I have a number of addresses.  Please unsubscribe them all as I am 
	leaving this company:
	
	marketing@seanational.com.au
	clientservices@seanational.com.au
	customerservice@seanational.com.au
	subscriptions@seanational.com.au
	unsubscribe@seanational.com.au

	Kind regards,

	xxxxxxxxxxxx - Marketing
	Software Engineering Australia (National) Limited
	Level 3, 493 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3004
	T. 1300 884 888, F. 1300 884 887

G	PREVIOUS COMPLAINTS TO CAUSE MISCHIEF
In the past there have been previous complaints to Zipworld the ISP that we use.  

It transpires that previous complaints have been by other businesses that are either other 
associations or event providers who objected to the way the OIC was using e-mail and web event 
registration.  

We have discovered this after we have requested the ISP to provide us with the e-mail address 
that had complained that it was not removed.

This complaint to you may be another example.

H	NEXT STEPS
Mr Haydon

Please provide me within 7 days the e-mail address of the complainant and I will ensure that 
it is removed from the list if it is a legitimate complaint within 1 following day

We would like to work with the Australian Communications Authority to ensure that companies 
implement effective e-mail policies so e-mail senders and e-mail receivers both benefit from 
e-mail as an efficient Business Information Tool.

Stephen GOULD
Public Officer
OPEN INTERCHANGE CONSORTIUM