This article is by Charis Palmer, news editor at The Conversation. It was first published on The Conversation and is re-published here with permission.

Tiger Airways is likely to face further damage to its reputation, after joining a growing list of big corporations being fined for breaching the Spam Act.

Tiger, which was grounded for 6 weeks by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority last year for air safety violations, was today fined $110,000 by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for failing to unsubscribe customers from marketing emails. “This is one of a number of investigations in which the ACMA has found businesses have allowed faulty unsubscribe facilities to continue, in spite of repeated customer complaints,” said ACMA deputy chairman Richard Bean.

Tiger’s fine comes on the back of identical fines for Optus and Virgin Blue, and a $55,000 for the Commonwealth Bank’s CommSec broking arm in 2010. “There’s been a range of action against corporations that we consider to be blue chip,” said Bruce Arnold, lecturer in law at the University of Canberra. You’d expect they’d be right on top of things but they keep on making mistakes.”

Mr Arnold said the prevailing view was often that the market would sort out such cases, with infuriated customers likely to take their business elsewhere. “A counter argument is that a whacking great penalty concentrates the minds of your executives. A big fine that gets everyone’s attention may well induce cultural change across the spectrum rather than just with one organisation.”

The biggest fines dished out by ACMA for Spam Act breaches have been directed towards smaller operators, such as Wayne Mansfield, who was personally fined $1 million in addition to his company being fined $4.5 million in 2006 for sending in excess of 213 million advertising emails.

The fines given to large corporations are appropriate said Mark Gregory, senior lecturer in electrical and computer engineering at RMIT University. “The issue is that the fines should occur more regularly for repeat offences,” Dr Gregory said. “The big corporates have had so many years warning that enough’s enough.”

Dr Gregory added it was a positive step that ACMA was continuing to issue fines, and said there had appeared to be some reluctance to do this in the past. “Fines, especially for large corporates need to be applied, and applied again and again if there are repeat offenders.”

Mr Arnold said the reputational risk, and the cost associated with a damaged reputation were more important than a paltry fine. “Corporations will say: how much will we have to spend on our new advertising campaign to offset that damage?”

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Image credit: Arnold/Inuyaki, Creative Commons

Tweet

• • Topic
  • Voices
  • Posts
  • Freshness
• • 77TB a month on fibre

    Started by:  Karl in: General telecommunications

  • 1
  • 1
  • 1 day ago

     Karl

  • Malcolm Turnbull, Time Traveller

    Started by:  quink in: Everything else

  • 2
  • 4
  • 1 week, 1 day ago

     Karl

  • Article on 'Ultraviolet'

    Started by:  ray73864 in: Everything else

  • 2
  • 2
  • 1 week, 4 days ago

     Karl

  • Surface sells out … of its tiny amount of stock?

    Started by:  Renai LeMay in: Gadgets

  • 4
  • 4
  • 1 week, 5 days ago

     douglasrose

  • Coalition fraudband plan summary…

    Started by:  Hubert Cumberdale in: National Broadband Network

  • 4
  • 5
  • 2 weeks, 3 days ago

     JamesH1

  • NBN Is A Question Of Reliability

    Started by:  JamesH1 in: National Broadband Network

  • 1
  • 1
  • 2 weeks, 3 days ago

     JamesH1

  • Renai asked:

    Started by:  Tinman_au in: National Broadband Network

  • 1
  • 1
  • 2 weeks, 3 days ago

     Tinman_au

  • What Happened to Whirlpool posts

    Started by:  MikeK101 in: Everything else

  • 2
  • 2
  • 1 month ago

     Bob.H

  • Conroy/Turnbull NBN Debate Next Week

    Started by:  zephram in: National Broadband Network

  • 1
  • 1
  • 1 month ago

     zephram

  • Blocked from posting? Let me know

    Started by:  Renai LeMay in: Everything else

  • 2
  • 2
  • 1 month ago

     Abel Adamski

  • Falsehoods of the day

    Started by:  Karl in: National Broadband Network

  • 4
  • 5
  • 1 month, 2 weeks ago

     Anonymous

  • Is IBM selling its Network Services Division to Telstra?

    Started by:  Renai LeMay in: Everything else

  • 1
  • 1
  • 1 month, 3 weeks ago

     Renai LeMay

  • 10 Terabit NBN plan? Yes please :)

    Started by:  daniel996 in: National Broadband Network

  • 2
  • 2
  • 1 month, 3 weeks ago

     Karl

  • Renai (or anyone else?): List of working tags?

    Started by:  Tinman_au in: Everything else

  • 3
  • 6
  • 2 months ago

     midspace

  • Receiving spam from "OEMSoftware Newsletter"?

    Started by:  Renai LeMay in: Everything else

  • 4
  • 4
  • 2 months ago

     midspace

•