That’s the case in germany. Unless you give your explicit consent of course
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I'm not German but I'd venture a guess that people still receive unsolicited outreach in Germany.
The internet is global. A person sitting in Palo Alto, a shack in a rural village in Southeast Asia, etc. doesn't care about German law and is, in all but a few exceptional cases, beyond its reach in the real world.
People do breach laws, yes. I don’t understand your point
The point is that Germany saying "you can't contact someone by email unless they want you to" is practically unenforceable in the real world. So it's pointless.
It’s regularly enforced… are your local laws pointless because other countries aren’t concerned? Is free speech in the US pointless because North Korea or China doesn’t respect it?
Regularly enforced against who?
Let's say some company or "entrepreneur" sitting in an office in Palo Alto or in his house in the Philippines wants to sell a SaaS app they vibe coded in a week.
They use AI to create a marketing email and list of targets. They blast it out and it lands in the inbox of some dude in Germany.
Do you really think the company or individual is going to ever face any consequences for sending the guy an email?
If they ever want to have a presence in Germany, yes
Why would they ever want to have a presence in Germany when they can sell digital products and services to anyone, anywhere, Germany included, from wherever they're located?
The bottom line is that in the real world, some random "entrepreneur" or SME sending an unsolicited "Hey software guy, I have a service you might be interested in" email to somebody in Germany isn't ever going to cause them trouble.
It's hardly pointless since local companies are more likely to profit from spamming because there is an inherently wider range of things they could sell you - so even just getting rid of them helps.
But that also doesn't really matter to this discussion - the law existing provides evidence that not wanting to receive unsolicited corporate communication is not a fringe opinion.
Correct. They are quite a sensitive demographic when it comes to human contact.