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Following customer complaints, CommSec recently fined $55K for not providing customers an Opt out option when sending out e-marketing. As a response, CommSec have appointed an independant auditer to assess their e-marketing activity and provide training. I do question a lot of marketing departments... does it take a fine from ACMA before they get up to speed with how to conduct their communications and campaigns?

Their ad agency should know what they're doing! It's not hard to put an unsubscribe link in an email. Wacky.

Hmmm makes one think whether someone in marketing was too lazy in their job or whether CommSec knowlingly defied spamming laws. Australian spamming laws can be found at http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/spam.html#acts

Gary Kim is referring to a survey made by e-marketer to point out that in the US the disparities in Internet usage between "Asians", "Hispanics", "Afro americans" and "white americans" will have almost disappeared, mostly because of the expansion of mobile phones giving access to Internet.

Overview found on legal site about the Spam Act. The release covers examples of what the Spam Act is all about, breaches, consequences of breaches and also how companies and individuals can protect themselves (however this is more a sales pitch).

PIR = parallel importation restriction. Basically, every country around the world (except a choice few like Hong Kong and New Zealand who did away with it) is a 'territory' so far as publishing is concerned. If you publish a book in Australia, you can't just ship it over to the US and sell it wholesale to the bookstores over there. No, you have to find a publisher over there who will by the licence to reproduce the book for that market. India looks to be thinking about doing away with that. On the plus side for consumers, they'll have access to the entire Amazon e-book range - Hooray! Publishers won't be so happy, as they will lose out on royalties from selling 'local' e-books (hardcopy books will also be affected, but that's not at issue here). Of course, it doesn't work both ways - India will still have to go through the usual channels to publish overseas. the US protects its own. Australia debated this last year, you may remember. Woolworths and Coles were all for PIR abolition, but not really anyone else was ...

Describes how twitter is being used for citizen participation and "democracy" in various countries from Moldova, Iran and now China. The author proposes that the best way to reduce censorship and promote "democracy" is not political pressure, but to "flood the Chinese market, and those of other countries that restrict freedom of expression, with cutting-edge technology". My opinion: Although Twitter seems to be good at allowing citizens to organise and to create consensus, it does not seem to translate well to actual policy outcome.