Direct and e marketing - Essay Example

"The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location" (1). Furthermore, some kind of businesses cannot manage without the Internet technologies and e-commerce. This paper will argue that it is impossible to imagine modern marketing technologies such as direct and e-marketing without effective data protection and privacy laws. 2. Data protection and privacy laws play a very important role for business development today and determine the future development of direct and e-marketing.

"Direct marketing is intrusive, both in relation to the privacy of personal behaviour, and into the privacy of personal data. The degree of sensitivity varies greatly, depending on the person, the data and the context" (2). Data protection and privacy laws vary in different countries, but there are some significant similarities concerning the issue. In the United States some data protection acts have been adopted. "Actions such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT) and The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act) have combined to create a relatively thorough protection of both financial data and personal information" (3).

Financial data and personal information protection are of great importance especially while using such marketing methods as direct marketing and e-marketing. Nonpublic personal information term is precisely determined and concerns many aspects of financial data, customer and seller information. "Nonpublic personal information collected includes, but is not limited to, data from the consumer, the consumer's transactions with a financial institution or its affiliate, from nonaffiliated third parties about the consumer's transactions with them and from credit reporting agencies" (3).

This information is protected with the data protection acts indicated above. European Union has also recently adopted data protection principles. The 8th Data Protection principle provides that "Personal data must not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory has an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects" (4). The UK also adopt data protection acts, but "Many are also commenting that the UK has inadequately implemented the Electronic Privacy Directive (2002/58/EC), resulting in too lenient a treatment of persons who send unsolicited commercial email ('spam') in the UK" (4).

So, the UK data protection policy needs to be improved, as well as in France: "The French Data Protection Authority, Commission Nationale de L'Infortmatique et des Liberts ("CNIL"), has ruled that an email service provided by Rampell Software, a Florida-based company, is illegal, as it breaches French data protection law" (4). But later, in May 2003, the UK legislation changed:" The most controversial aspect of the legal changes is the new regulatory regime for email marketing.