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By Julian Goldsmith, 16 October 1998 00:20

NEWS Human rights pressure group, Amnesty International is using its newly launched branded Internet service to boost funds and save money. The service is run for Amnesty members in partnership with an Internet marketing company, Affinity Access, and service provider UUNet Worldcom. As part of the deal, Amnesty and Affinity share a commission paid by UUNet, which amounts to £15 a year for each new subscriber. Amnesty estimates a potential subscription base of around 5 per cent of its 130,000 UK members and so calculates extra revenue of £100,000 per year. Amnesty is also able to use the service as a communications and campaigning tool. The pressure group operates by asking its members to send communications to targeted political and military figures to put pressure them into recognising basic human rights.
Calls to action and other communication is often done by first class and airmail post. But according to an Amnesty spokesman, the group can now use the Internet service to contact members all over the world by email - making a substantial potential saving on postal fees. Members can also bombard the email boxes of target figures. The Amnesty spokesman denied that this sort of practice contravenes rules on spamming. "It's not spamming," he said. "It's the same as sending a fax. The content may not be pleasant, but as long as we are not asking anyone to buy anything, we are okay. If it was promoting something commercial, then it might be spamming."