Sweden Goes Spam-Friendly

CM writes: "The Swedish Parliament has passed a law coming into effect on May 1 that allows sending UCE to any address, unless it's on a specific opt-out list. This opt-out list hasn't been set up yet and will only be effective in Sweden. It will also be availible to anyone, so being on it will probably just increase the amount of spam one receives (from companies not in Sweden). The full law text and parliamentary debate can be viewed (Swedish only, sorry) at link The decision was actually taken on March 23 and is an adoption of an EU law. Some other EU-countries have instead chosen the other alternative proposed by EU, which disallows spam sent to anyone who hasn't explicitly allowed it (opt-in). "

Comments

huh?

[macpeep]

I read the text and it said the opposite. That you can NOT send spam unless the user has said it's ok. The submitted story is backwards!

Re:huh?

[macpeep]

doh, never mind.. that only applied to fax and calls. email you have to excplicitly forbid.

Re:huh?

[geeklawyer]

Mcpeep, Any chance you can give us a detailed summary?

Re: huh?

[guran]

Unfortunately the story is correct. More details are allready posted here

Re:huh?

[CM]

Sorry for the briefness and unclearness. Basically, this is about a new law concerning direct marketing, in all forms.

The EU-directive from which this law came requires for direct marketing via automatic dialing systems and faxes must be explicitly allowed beforehand by the reciptient (opt-in). For other forms of communication, the directive allows the member-country to choose either opt-in or opt-out.

The Swedish parliament choose to go with opt-out. What this means is that it _is_ legal (in Sweden at least) to spam Swedish addresses which are not on a special opt-out-list. The same goes for telemarketing (where opt-out will hopefully work a lot better)

Some parties put in reservations against the decision, wanting opt-in for UCE and telemarketing. From skimming through some of the debate it seems that some very good arguments for opt-in were presented (people on the list will risk harvestering and e-mail wastes the reciptient's resources just like fax). Obviously one of the arguments for not going opt-in on UCE was that it "... would slow down the continuing developement in an expansive area".

Ack, this still feels pretty brief, anything more you'd want to know?

Re:Useless

[twq]

I believe that the other variety of this law (as proposed by EU) is the only thing that is reasonable in the long term.

Right now spammers are using lists of email adresses compiled from newsgroup scans and other automatic gathering techniques, however the ONLY way I want databases to get information about me is when i submit the info myself. Dont you agree?

I want a law that forces every spammer to use the official list only as their source for email adresses. And for that to be effective we need a worldwide agreement.

That's not too much to ask is it?

Useless

[dlc]

How useless! Well intentioned, but useless. Currently spammers (sorry, "Senders of UCE") get around these laws by sending the mail from a server in another country. I cannot imagine that a law in Sweden will apply to a spammer in, say, China, whether that law is a modification of an EU law or not. Well intentioned, but destined to fail, in the same way that all of these laws fail. You cannot apply a traditional approach to solving these non-traditional problems.

That said, how can I get on their no-spam list? Every little bit helps (not that I'm getting a lot of mail from Dave.Rhodes@MAKE.MONEY.FAST.se, but it can't hurt.)

darren

Cthulhu for President!