Digital Thoughts: Pardon Me, Ma’am and Sir: The Netiquette Gray Area of Online Marketing

Virginia Shea’s intriguing work Netiquette, published in 1994, seemed to be completely ahead of its time. True, there were some of us already using the internet for chat boards and rustic email. However, the issues raised in the book are still relevant ten years later. That’s an amazing feat considering the work is dealing with both social graces and the internet which are two facets of life that seem to be completely changing every year. The definition Shea begins with is fairly straightforward:

“What is Netiquette? Simply stated, it’s network etiquette — that is, the etiquette of cyberspace. And "etiquette" means "the forms required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be required in social or official life." In other words, Netiquette is a set of rules for behaving properly online.”

Applying Shea’s thesis of a set of standard and correct behaviors for online activity is quite interesting. With the advent of the post-CANSPAM market, this application has even more merit. Legal scholars often talk of the “spirit” of the law and the “letter” of the law. In this context, spirit of the law pertains to what is being implied by a law code but not necessarily written down. Letter of the law, of course, has to do with the exact written intention of the law and what it literally says. Both the spirit and letter of the law are determined somewhat by interpretation. However, CANSPAM does have some gray area included in which the spirit of the law fills the silent vacuum. Interpretation is quite important in this context.

For instance, CANSPAM addresses harvesting, dictionary attackes, using misleading header information, inclusion of identity from publishers and advertisers, and the responsibility of advertisers in the use of commercial mail. However, there is a loud absence concerning the practical definitions of some of the terms, and even an absence of language dictating that it is heretofore illegal to send unsolicited commercial email. The EU (European Union) version of anti-spam legislature virtually made sending unsolicited mail illegal and threatens jail time. There, the letter of the law is much more heavy handed, whereas the US’ CANSPAM legislation seems to law down the law on issues commonly held to be less-than-honest, but doesn’t go so far as to completely define the playing field and address all issues in stark black and white language.

Rather, there exists a gray area between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. CANSPAM addresses the “non-solicited” commercial email in Section 2a:

“(2) The convenience and efficiency of electronic mail are threatened by the extremely rapid growth in the volume of unsolicited commercial electronic mail. Unsolicited commercial electronic mail is currently estimated to account for over half of all electronic mail traffic, up from an estimated 7 percent in 2001, and the volume continues to rise. Most of these messages are fraudulent or deceptive in one or more respects.”

After that, CANSPAM directs more of its energy towards “these messages are fraudulent or deceptive in one or more respects.” It’s an interesting move, considering the harsh rhetoric from the public, the EU law and the various state laws (especially the toothy California law). So, what are we to make of this gray area?

This is where we return to Virginia Shea and the topic of netiquette. It provides a useful schema that allows for success and profit from online marketing in the post-CANSPAM world, while allowing for the indisputable fact that the consumer is king.

Shea lays out the topic of netiquette in a neat series of rules ranging from “remember the humanity of others” to “make yourself look good online” to (timely for online marketers’) “respect others’ privacy online.” Certainly, there are some parts of Shea’s book that are completely outdated considering the constant mutation, maturation and changes occurring in cyberspace relationships. But in the context of CANSPAM’s gray area concerning sending unsolicited mail, netiquette is left to pick up the slack and hold the position as a valuable tool of interpretation.

Both netiquette and the spirit of the CANSPAM law point to the primacy of the consumer in the advertiser-marketer-consumer matrix. If the consumer doesn’t want to receive mailings or information from a certain advertiser, they have the power to do so. The power of the relationship has shifted to the consumers, and it will be interesting to see how online marketers continue to use ideas such as netiquette and the spirit of the CANSPAM law in their campaigns.

Netiquette is Text copyright 1994 Virginia Shea.
Web pages copyright © 1994-2000 Albion.com.
All rights reserved.

Sam Harrelson is co-editor of the Digital Moses Confidential. Please send any comments or questions to [email protected]