Gooday all on BA
I am getting repeated requests by “Balangara Films” to donate money. When I attempt to unsubscribe from their mailing list the message says that I would be unsubscribing from Birding Aus. Is there an arrangement between Balangara Films and BA or is this some sort of scam?
Greg Little
Greg Little – Principal Consultant
General Flora and Fauna
PO Box 526
Wallsend, NSW, 2287, Australia
Ph 02 49556609
Fx 02 49556671
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Philip,
It makes no difference whether the cause is good or not. It makes no difference whether the project has merit or not. It makes no difference if the film is worthwhile or not.
Sending unsolicited email in Australia is illegal. It is as simple as that. It contravenes the Spam Act 2003 – and everyone should be aware that this law is incredibly strict, and the fines are potentially huge – up to $1.1million PER DAY for businesses. There are also heavy fines for individuals breaching this Act also.
Whilst Balangara Films clearly meant well, what they have done contravenes the Spam Act and ANY recipient of this email could be justified in reporting them to the ACMA.
A good proportion of my business life involves working with businesses and ensuring that when they participate in bulk email campaigns they do so within the law and not outside it. That means that businesses MUST have a pre-existing business relationship with the recipients of their emails – and this does not include both being members of the same mailing list (birding-aus). Alternatively, businesses must only send email to customers that opt-in to receive email (which is how birding-aus works). All recipients, regardless of the rule by which they became recipients must be able to opt-out of receiving these emails – and there are equally heavy fines for disregarding opt-out requests.
I can’t find the exact figures, but Spam accounts for an incredibly high proportion of email sent in the world and a huge amount of money is wasted each year in attempting to prevent Spam, and in dealing with the consequences of Spam. It is not a trivial matter.
Putting the legalities aside for the moment, I am sure that none of us like receiving unsolicited email – and I must say that I particularly don’t like receiving unsolicited email asking me for money.
The correct approach here would have been to write to the list owner (Russell) and ask him if it was OK to publish some information about the project and the film and to ask the list subscribers to opt-in to Balangara’s mailing list if they were interested in finding out more. Once people had opted-in, Balangara could have sent out their email to the subscribers.
And I’m sorry Mark, but to give the sending of unsolicited mail a clever-sounding name like “crowd funding” is simply hiding behind those words – unsolicited email in any form whatsoever is Spam. I am not opposed to the idea of raising money for a worthwhile project by collecting small amounts from many people (which really is what “crowd funding” is), but it must be done legally.
My advice to Russell, the birding-aus list owner, will be to add some terms and conditions to the birding-aus.org web site that specifically disallow the collection of email addresses from birding-aus for the purpose of sending unsolicited emails directly to the members of birding-aus and bypassing the birding-aus moderation system.
Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria
There has been quite a bit said on this subject, but no matter what the cause is or its merits – it still remains a plea for monetary support.
That isn’t a crime in and of itself, BUT, there are a lot of birding and environmental ventures running around and if the floodgates were to open on this forum it wouldn’t be 30 emails a day it could quite easily be 100.
You go away for a week on a trip (or longer) and guess what you’ve got waiting for you in your inbox? A whole lot of reasons to think seriously about unsubscribing altogether.
A better approach for such ventures would be taking advertisements out on the sides of birding websites. Here folk would know it was vetted by the website and the scam element would be avoided.
I guess I didn’t really mind receiving one email, but daily? And where would it end, if every such venture did the same…………………………?
Allan Richardson Morisset NSW
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Sadly, as the email didn’t go through the Birding-Aus system, but rather was sent to a large list of email addresses, and the list was given the coincidental name BirdingAus (or maybe Birding-Aus or Birding Aus) it doesn’t have anything to do with what we know as Birding-Aus. If that isn’t confusing…
Moderators can’t do anything about it.
Bill (moderator)
why is it a sad attitude? I am receiving unsolicited emails asking me for money for a project that (whether its legitimate or not) comes across as very much like a scam. Therefore I have been ignoring them. Its not sad, its common sense. Given the emails the group has got from its members about the issue I suspect the film-makers have rather shot themselves in their collective feet over their approach to their fund-raising.
________________________________ Sent: Friday, 18 November 2011 5:48 PM
That is a sad attitude. As I wrote, I don’t think they are a scam. They are seeking donations from presumably interested people to assist in producing what should be a nice film, having already come close to finishing and they are basically offering sponsorships. But I do not know the people directly.
Philip
I’m not sure what the moderators could do. It appears these people have collected the email addresses from the list, perhaps by subscribing to it, and have sent their emails directly to each of us. Short of abandoning the list for a web forum, there’s no way to stop others doing that. (Unless the list can be configured not to include the sender’s address, but that would remove a lot of the value of it.)
To Belinda’s suggestion that they could email us through the list, I think the moderators might quickly put a stop to that.
But it’s obvious that several of us have contacted them about this, and I assume they’ll be more careful in future.
Peter Shute
________________________________________ Sent: Friday, 18 November 2011 5:20 PM
Ken,I dont want to start a major debate either – I’d rather get back to the birds? But I really dont think the incident should be ignored and I would value the moderator’s view R? If we encourage anyone with a possible interest via a worthy cause or associated product to use this group for marketing, it will be overwhelmed, lose it’s purpose and die. The action, no matter how worthy the cause, is simply unacceptable in my view and endangers the great value of this community. (I do like the beaut new euphamism “crowdfunding” though – I’ll store that one).Graeme ===============================
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One wonders why they chose to e-mail subscribers individually instead of just posting to the group as a whole – not sneaky or spammy and would probably have garnered them a lot more donations and less hostility.
Hopefully the bad buisness decision doesn’t have unfortunate repercussions on the lyrebird. 😉
Belinda Stirling W.A.
Ken,I dont want to start a major debate either – I’d rather get back to the birds? But I really dont think the incident should be ignored and I would value the moderator’s view R? If we encourage anyone with a possible interest via a worthy cause or associated product to use this group for marketing, it will be overwhelmed, lose it’s purpose and die. The action, no matter how worthy the cause, is simply unacceptable in my view and endangers the great value of this community. (I do like the beaut new euphamism “crowdfunding” though – I’ll store that one).Graeme
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I’m ok with this kind of email, but I’ve had several from them in the last few days. The most recent, selling a lyrebird ringtone, no, an AMAZING lyrebird ringtone, was the one that finally got me annoyed.
I’m considering boycotting all lyrebird products now, that’s ALL lyrebird products.
Peter Shute
Hi, I can understand some folk’s reaction to the Balanagara film’s fundraising method. However one possible reaction could be just to delete the offending email and move on.
Given the poverty of positive wildlife publicity I would have thought this sort of project would be encouraged by birdingaus subscribers [if not their ‘sneaky’ method of advertising]. I must say I can understand the mistake being made; in their earnestness for the project it would have seemed natural to seek out groups already ‘on the side’ of the birds.
Correct and forgive would be my advice rather than take up a vendetta.
Ken Cross [I have no financial interest in this project although I have made a donation….]
Can but agree – quite annoying- and particularly offensive that when you try to unsubscribe you are “unsubscribed” from birding-aus.Very poor form if genuinely seeking support.Graeme
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Sending unsolicited commercial messages is illegal in Australia – http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_300029. Whether the cause is good or not – and I agree that this seems to be a perfectly legitimate project – is irrelevant.
Hopefully this is not the start of a trend!
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You just don’t get it – I – and many other members of the Birding-Aus community – object to our names making it on to your mailing list. As far as I know none of us signed up and we do not know how our names were collected. I suspect you have done more damage to your cause by the bad publicity that you are getting than you will gain in donations – I would certainly urge all my fellow Birding-Ausers to boycott the company.
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Dave
Thanks for the info, being a low tech bod I did not know this.
Greg
Hi Greg, The email marketing program they are using is Mail Chimp. In this online program you can set up various databases for subscribers from different places and give them a name. My guess is that they have named one of the databases “Birding Aus” as that is where they have harvested the email addresses from. You are simply unsubscribing from them. There is no connection between the “real” birding-aus and their mailing list, so don’t worry about unsubscribing. Hope that helps.
Cheers Dave
Gooday all on BA
I am getting repeated requests by “Balangara Films” to donate money. When I attempt to unsubscribe from their mailing list the message says that I would be unsubscribing from Birding Aus. Is there an arrangement between Balangara Films and BA or is this some sort of scam?
Greg Little
Greg Little – Principal Consultant
General Flora and Fauna
PO Box 526
Wallsend, NSW, 2287, Australia
Ph 02 49556609
Fx 02 49556671
http://www.gff.com.au
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
I suspect everybody on the email group is getting them. I assumed them to be a scam and am just ignoring them.
________________________________ Sent: Friday, 18 November 2011 4:38 PM
Gooday all on BA
I am getting repeated requests by “Balangara Films” to donate money. When I attempt to unsubscribe from their mailing list the message says that I would be unsubscribing from Birding Aus. Is there an arrangement between Balangara Films and BA or is this some sort of scam?
Greg Little
Greg Little – Principal Consultant
General Flora and Fauna
PO Box 526
Wallsend, NSW, 2287, Australia
Ph 02 49556609
Fx 02 49556671
http://www.gff.com.au
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org =============================== ===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
And so am I. Denise
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I have no reason to doubt that it is a genuine project – but it annoys me that I get spam which would seem to have been either generated by hacking the birding-aus list or by its sale in some form – or maybe they just monitor all the postings and use those names. Whatever happened, it is ethically dubious!
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It’s safe to unsubscribe; “Birding Aus” appears to be the name they have given their mailing list, obviously containing email addresses scraped off the real Birding-Aus list.
Possibly a scam; definitely spam.
Hello Greg,
To the best of my knowledge, both the film and the request for financial support to assist its production are genuine. Or I have no reason to doubt it. I have corresponded with the film makers a year or two ago and recently about what would go in the film. However the bit about “When I attempt to unsubscribe from their mailing list the message says that I would be unsubscribing from Birding Aus” seems most peculiar to me. I can’t explain that.
Philip
Likewise.
I did unsubscribe (and noted it said I would be unsubscribed from BirdingAus) but I am still getting BirdingAus emails. Certainly something fishy going on
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Hmmm I’m getting the same emails. I wasn’t sure where they got my contact from either.
Thanks for noting the BA link Greg!
Inger Vandyke
Professional Wildlife Photographer and Writer Expedition Leader – Western Tibet Expedition (16 September – 7 October, 2013) Assistant Publicity Officer – Southern Oceans Seabird Study Association (SOSSA) Author – The Scrub Turkey Chronicles http://scrubturkeychronicles.blogspot.com/
Mob: 0402 286 437
http://www.ingervandyke.com http://www.ingervandyke.blogspot.com
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