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Dutch Anti-Spam Ruling Nullified on Appeal
dex@ruunat writes: "Today, the Amsterdam court nullified an earlier ruling by a lower judge that that spam outfit AbFab is forbidden to send spam to customers of the Dutch ISP XS4all. According to the XS4all website (Dutch only), the judge ruled that spam doesn't cause very much inconvenience, and that people who want to get rid of it can easily change their email address. XS4all considers appealing to the Dutch high court. There's one other ray of hope though: in 15 months, the new European spam directive will come into force, effectively outlawing all spam." A prize of zero dollars to the reader who can suggest the translation engine which does the best job with Dutch :)
Yeah, right, so I change my e-mail address, then I have to tell everyone I actually want to contact me what the new e-mail address is, then they have to actually remember that I am at the new e-mail address (or update their database, address book or whatever on me), then when the spammers find me at the new e-mail address, the whole thing repeats all over again. Meanwhile, the ISP is getting spam trying to get sent to the abandoned e-mail addresses... Would the judge feel the same way if this were a phone number we were talking about here?
July 18th 2002 ...not important, tells that really annoying spam can be forbidden or something)"
The Amsterdam court today ruled in the case of Abfab vs XS4ALL and 4 customers. The court destroys the ruling which forbade Abfab to send unsollicited commercial e-mail (spam) to customers of XS4ALL, with a punishment of 50 EURO per message (that had to be paid of Abfab did send spam). The court does leave the possibility to sue spammers in general if they cause severe interference ; "In the case of the type of spam which causes interference, the proportionality-claims (?) are in place and
The court extensively talks about the different grounds upon which XS4ALL had based the anti-spam ruling, namely the telecommunication-law, privacy- and (network ) ownership rights. Unfortunately the court concludes that none of these grounds justify the stop of Abfabs very -according to XS4ALL- unwanted behaviour.
XS4ALL really doesn't agree with the Court's finding that the breach of privacy of the adressees is relatively small. In a hard to understand point of view the Court concludes that an e-mail address is less of a a public given than a (mail-)address, and thus surely has a more confidential character, but that the publication of it on the other hand would cause less damage than a real address, because you can easily and at low costs change e-mail adresses. In the eyes of XS4ALL the Court hereby shows little insight in the value netizens attribute to the conservation (transl?) of their e-mail address as a digital identity. Especially now when lots of netizens are moving to permanent, broad-band internet, costs of changing address rise.
XS4ALL is disappointed about this negative ruling and is asking advise about the possibility to go to the supreme court. The new European Guideline for Privacy in the Telecom-sector explicitely forbids interference of internet-work with unwanted bulkmail. The European Counsil has accepted the final text and the publication of in the official publication of the EU is therefor expected soon. After that the member states have got 15 months to implement the prohibition. The Court acknowledges this and says: "The problem of XS4ALL and [the 4 customers] will fade, as the situation looks now, away automatically." XS4ALL had hoped wholehartedly to immediately help her customers avoid this kind of interference from Abfab and other similar digital marketing companies, but can now only help customers installing technical spam filters to maintain access to "serious" communication.
I think that for a one month period, sometime this year, all anti-spammers and ISP's around the globe should suspend any activities that they are currently undertaking to supress spam.
If we could get all anti-spammers and ISPs around the globe to work together, we'd have implemented a new protocol which eliminates spam by now.