Let me address the issue of Josh's email from a different perspective.
In order to solicit votes, Josh needed to present his credentials and
position to all members who are entitled to vote.  He has some options:

1  To make a public statement on this list, in which case he'd reach
only part of his constituency
2  To mail each member individually, in which case he'd need access to
all auda's private list of members, which I suspect would be improper.
3  To mail those members who are on his personal mail list, in an effort
to be discreet
4  To do all of the above, which means that several members would have
received multiple solicitations from Josh.

Because I never received such an email from Josh, I must asume that he
mailed only members in his personal list, which to me is wholly
appropriate, is not spam, and is a proper approach.  Would there have
been howls of protest had he made such a solicitation in this forum?
Perhaps, but then again perhaps not.

To have loudly protested here is, I think, petty, maybe even malicious.
A mature response would have been to object to Josh personally, as was
his original mail.

Ron Stark


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Skeeve Stevens [mailto:skeeve§skeeve.org] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2003 7:18 PM
> To: dns§lists.auda.org.au
> Subject: RE: [DNS] Re: auDA AGM 2003
> 
> 
> 
> Well... It depends... If a 'mass mail' has a context to the 
> recipient, it is not spam. An ISP emailing its customers 
> about outages isnt spam. My local member sending me a letter 
> about an upcoming election, isn't junk mail. Josh's email to 
> the voting body of auDA is NOT spam. Josh sending it to all 
> aussie-isp members would be spam, because there would only be 
> a minority interested in auDA.
> 
> Anyone thinking otherwise is just being a pain.
> 
> I was thinking recently about some of the email I am getting, 
> the advertising from places like eBay and such.. Then 
> thought, well I did sign up for an account there.. I guess 
> that goes with it, and it technically isn't spam.
> 
> Spam is a sensitive subject these days, but it needs to be 
> clearly defined.
> 
> I personally wouldn't have a problem if the candidates posted 
> here explaining their stance of a range of issues... And the 
> voting body could feel free to ask clarifying questions... 
> Nothing wrong with it at all.
> 
> 
> ...Skeeve
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Suter [mailto:suter§zwitterion.humbug.org.au] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2003 5:32 PM
> To: AuDA DNS List
> Subject: Re: [DNS] Re: auDA AGM 2003
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Folks,
> 
> josh> My email was individually addressed to yourself, 
> however the same
> josh> general email content was sent to other Demand class 
> members on a 
> josh> one-to-one basis.  While you might be classify it as 
> spam, it is 
> josh> definitely not bulk (http://www.caube.org.au/whatis.htm).
> 
> The content forwarded to this list doesn't stray from the 
> topic of the upcoming election and Josh's wish to be elected. 
>  Josh has emailed voting members seeking their vote.
> 
> This seems a suitable use of email and I argue that being a 
> voting member means you explicitly and knowingly invite this 
> campaigning.
> 
> Do we really consider Josh's campaigning spam?  Simple 
> replies to me and I'll summarise back to the list.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> - -- Mark John Suter  | I know that you  believe  you 
> understand suter§humbug.org.au | what you think I said, but I 
> am not sure gpg key id 2C71D63D | you realise that what you  
> heard  is not
> mobile 0411 262 316 | what I meant.        Robert J. McCloskey
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Check Keyservers or http://zwitterion.org/keys/
> 
> iD8DBQE/sdPsRYso2ixx1j0RAk7wAJ9RMxBM14HprjWfVtOXM0xuf342AgCeMpHc
> Cs77GWCmvTH/52ccEdeH5C8=
> =d379
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> 
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