French Legislators Vote to Ban Spam

mlawmlaw writes "The Herald is reporting that France's National Assembly has voted 'in favor of banning unsolicited e-mail sales messages.' This is an admendment to a law to 'increase confidence in the digital economy.' This would ban 'direct marketing, notably advertising, via electronic messages' to individuals who had not given consent. The article is light on details, but it's nice to see France taking a step to reduce spam."

Comments

No way to enforce thhis

[rudy_wayne]

I am completely in agreement with the idea of outlawing spam and have long wished for such a law in the US. Unfortunately, the more I think about it, the more I realize, there's just no way to enforce such a law.

First, in order to enforce such a law you would have to create some sort of governmental agency where you would send your spam complaints and they would go after the spammers. This, of course, results in the creation of another bloated government bureaucracy fincanced by your tax dollars. This raises a number of issues -- not the least of which is "how much benefit will you really get in return for the millions of dolars that will be spent".

The second problem, and the most frustrating, is one that I have run into in my own attempts at fighting spam. When I trace the IP addresses of the spam which arrives in my inbox daily, I find that more and more are originating from foreign countries, including Korea, China, Spain and Brazil.

So, no matter how tough your anti-spam law may be, it's worthless when spammers cant take advantage of open relays in foreign countries.

Re:No way to enforce thhis

[jalet]

> First, in order to enforce such a law you would
> have to create some sort of governmental agency
> where you would send your spam complaints

Fortunately for us, in France, we already have such an agency since 1978. It's called the CNIL (http://www.cnil.fr) for "Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés" (National Commission for Computing an Liberties), and principally deals with privacy issues and personnal information storage and retrieval.

Last year they opened a spam mailbox, for people to forward them spam messages, expecting about ten messages a day or so, but in a few days the mailbox quota exploded with more than 65000 messages...

Now they ARE aware !

this legislation doesn't solve anything

[w00dy]

This would ban 'direct marketing, notably advertising, via electronic messages' to individuals who had not given consent.

The problem with legislation like this is that most people opt-in on a specific site, but that list gets sold. You don't know what the buyers are using that information for so consent was given, but not necessarily to the people sending. US laws have a very similar problem.

Re:So the French are good for something after all

[MarvinMouse]

actually french fries weren't made by the french in france, but rather Belgium (source).

even then though, the evidence is sketchy. In reality the reason they are called French fries is because the way of cutting the potatoes is called "to french". Cutting a potatoe in long, slender slices is to french the potatoe. (Not to be confused with a different more modern "to french").

Just some interesting facts.

Re:Spammers declare war.

[nlvp]

I don't know if he's French, but I am, and yes, it is ignorant. And yes, it is old. And yes, it is insulting. And no. It's not funny, nor is it smart.

Re:Keep the government out of this

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard they are building a Maginot Firewall.

Re:The Irony

[DroppedPacket]

How is spam different than bulk mail?

Let me count the ways... And you did itemize some of them.

Bulk mail (i.e. junk mail) is sender paid

I get more Spam than junk mail

Junk mail isn't always trying to sell me sex. Er, ignore the Victoria's Secret catalog for a minute. That's literature

I can always find out who sent me junk mail

I get junk mail once a day. I get Spam throughout the day.

Spam clogs the internet and slows down the transfer of useful pr0n

Faked headers and bounces, etc., can lead to a lot of wasted disk space and admin time, overflow of legitimate mailboxes, etc.

Re:The Irony

[mcmay]

First: Bulk snail mail is controlled in other civilized countries like the Netherlands. You can put a sticker on your mail slot to say you don't want to receive it. Just because something is a certain way does not suggest that it or its derivatives should be that way. That's called a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy.

Second: The resources consumed in snail mail are compensated for in the form of postage to the carrier. It is comparatively zero cost to the recipient. Spam is paid for by people providing service to themselves, not to the person or bot sending the spam.

And then there's the situation regarding sites being bombarded with spam. I've received hundreds of messages in a tight timeframe (i.e., minutes). That's different from the onesie-twosie nature of most bulk snail mail. I suspect that if some jackass started walking up to your mailbox and stuffing it with 300 letters, all requiring sorting and inspection to ensure that good email isn't being thrown out unread, you'd probably be begging for this kind of restriction in The Real World(tm) as well.

Re:finally...

[freestyle-fiend]

> but seriously, why would france want to attack its
> best oil supplier?

Also, US oil companies stand to gain from this war. If it is acceptable for the US to act in its own commercial interests, then why is it not acceptable for France to protect its business? (I am not saying the right course of action will not coincide with anyone's business interests, just that the parties involved have too much of a conflict of interest to be trusted).

> they aren't chickens, they're
> smart business men who just happen to deal with
> tryannical dictators.

Much like US governments who have illegally overthrown democratically elected governments in the name of democracy, supported Saddam Hussein when it suited them to, funded Al Qaeda, backed Isreal's war of aggression against Palestine, permitted its citizens to fund terrorism against Britain, supported dictators in Saudi Arabia and human rights violations in Turkey and imposed poverty on Cuba through unwarranted sanctions. All done in accordance with US business interests.