Recently a few writers have taken aim at the notion that the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) intends for their junk mail opt-out tool, DMAChoice, to really and truly allow you to exercise control over the flow of junk mail into your home.
To be sure, some people have found the DMA’s opt-out tool helpful, and some of the credit for that goes to all the Americans who have expressed their frustration with junk mail and put pressure on the DMA to pick up their game a bit. But the DMA’s half-measures still appear to fall short. For example, check out this investigative post from Jonathan Kamens, “DMA’s Mail Preference Service: Once a fraud, always a fraud.” The widely-popular Consumerist.com even excerpted Jonathan’s findings in Chris Walters’ post entitled “Direct Marketing Opt Out Website is a Joke.”
And here’s blogger Alan Durning on his year-long experiment to suss out how effective the DMA’s service really was in cutting down his junk mail. (In short: not enough).
The DMA exists to protect the interests of the direct marketing industry, including the selling of personal information lists, and the lobbying of government officials and politicians who show any inkling of support for enforceable opt-out tools. It has often resorted to transparent propaganda when faced with junk mail’s environmental impacts. (Note that the website of Mail Moves America,theDMA’s chief D.C. lobbying group, feeds us this all-time wtf: “Direct Mail is not trees, it is printed communication.”)
What we need, of course, is a real Do Not Mail Registry– enforceable, free, comprehensive, and not just another way for junk mailers to collect information, while continuing to waste as much paper as possible.
UPDATE 10.12.09 — The original version of this post did not in fact point out that Consumerist.com’s post included many large excerpts from Jonathan Kamens’ original blog post.
My name is “Jonathan Kamens”, not “Jonathan Keenan”. It’s a bit of a mystery how you misspelled it, since it is spelled properly as The Consumerist and on every page of my blog.
Furthermore, it is misleading to give Chris Walters credit for the ideas about the DMA posted on The Consumerist and refer to my blog entry merely as “an early post.” In fact, Chris’s posting on The Consumerist is, as he noted, excerpted from mine, and The Consumerist merely reprinted excerpts from my blog entry. Please give credit where it is due.
Этот топик просто бесподобен
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Согласен…
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Что-то так не выходит ничего…
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