Fundamentally, the challenge we're dealing with is that we have a piece of legislation that starts with a very broad prohibition and then has exceptions. Those exceptions are really quite firm, although they do have the possibility of being altered significantly in regulation.
The issue is that for most pieces of legislation where they're looking to curtail particular behaviour, they name exactly what the harmful behaviour is and outlaw that. They leave other behaviour that doesn't meet the threshold of needing to be outlawed to still exist.
Now, I recognize that a number of people have argued that there's a cumulative effect of all of this. You can have one piece of unsolicited commercial e-mail that's not, on its face, particularly offensive, but when you get dozens and dozens, or thousands and thousands, appearing in your inbox, cumulatively they have a very significant impact.
The challenge is trying to make sure that this piece of legislation is sufficiently tailored so that it does deal with what is seen as being the harm, which is that huge number of e-mail messages that people do not want, and at the same time tries to address a circumstance where there are e-mail messages that many people, and maybe the preponderance of people, would say would be reasonable in the circumstances. Making sure that the two fit together; that's what this legislative scheme has to allow to take place.
What is reasonable is going to differ from one individual to another. It's a very difficult task that this committee has and that everybody who's appeared before this committee has had to deal with. But given the way the scheme is in this piece of legislation, it appears to be consent based. If you have the person's explicit consent in the manner prescribed, you can send them commercial e-mail messages. If you have implied consent--implied consent is very narrowly limited to within this existing business relationship, fundamentally--you can send them messages. But there's a possibility, a chance, that there are kinds of communications that are not particularly offensive and that in fact in some cases may be welcomed that would inadvertently be caught within this very broad net.
To give one example, let's say I'm an accountant and I would really like to volunteer for your next campaign. I'd really like to help you and offer accounting services to your campaign. I could not send you that message by e-mail. I could not tell you that. That would be outlawed. Even if it's to completely volunteer, one element within that would be a smidgen of self-promotion, which is enough to taint that entire e-mail message and make it unlawful.
Referrals are obviously something that you've heard about. There's even the change of address notification to your professional contacts. They may not have been customers, they may not be your family and friends, they may not be people you've done business with; they're members of associations. That sort of e-mail message, which a lot of people would say is reasonable, would probably be caught within that net.
I think the challenge is to try to tailor the legislation so that the bad stuff is caught and the inoffensive stuff is not necessarily caught.