Slashdot Mirror
UK And EU May Make Unsolicited Email Illegal
An anonymous reader writes "According to this BBC article the UK and the EU are planning to making unsolicited email simply illegal. This doesn't do anything for prevention practically, but it does legally pave the way for measures that do. Lord Sainsbury of Turville admits it will do nothing to stop spam from outside the EU."
Last time I checked, UK was a part of the EU, and has been for decades. :P
Ok I did not read the article yet ,but I always thought the UK was part of the EU (not the EMU though)?
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
Sort of nit-picking, I know, but shouldn't that be unsolicited "commercial" email. I get heaps of unsolicited email. From friends, colleagues etc...
:-)
I would hate not to get any email that wasn't a direct response to something I sent. What would I do for 2hours every morning when I got in?
we will send an email to all potential spammers to inform them of the new laws...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I wonder where they'll draw the line of `unsolicited email'. Which mails fall under this category ? For mails like `RRApply for a online mortgage loan 247', it is clear, but if I send a mail to somebody, and this person doesn't like me, can he accuse me for sending unsolicited email ?
Or at least is targeted at the US - most of the offers I get every day are for cheap dental care, cheap medical care, loans in USD and fake diplomas from US Universities (and of course porn).
;)
This would indicate that most is from the US, so obviously this new law means F**k all, although I guess we could go for extradition or arrest them if they come to Europe on holiday
In Denmark it is already illegal for companies(but not people) to send out SPAM.
:-)
If the EU makes SPAM illegal, then spammers cannot SPAM from the EU.
US is also trying to stop SPAM.
Lets say these countries are the only ones to do something. It will still work!
Currently I put everything from china into my SPAM-folder and by golly, I'll just blacklist every country that doesn't have anti-SPAM laws.
Problem (almost) solved
-- Make software not war
Besides, it is hard to get a T1 in the middle of the ocean.
Though the article implies that this would be directed towards commercial email, it doesn't seem to explicitly say so.
:-P )
"Unsolicited email" could include personal and noncommercial messages.
Perhaps "Unsolicited Commercial Email", or even "Unsolicited Mass Email" should be addressed.
It'd be nice if the text of the proposed legislation were linked to somewhere. (This is your invitation, Gentle Reader, to post any such links of which you may have knowledge...
1. Signup for lots of pr0n sites
:)
2. Receive lots of spam
3. ???
4. Profit!
How long before someone gets their ass sued off as a result of this.
Gah i hate spam
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
What exactly is unsolicited email?
Yes i know spam but what is their definition, i dont want to get sued for sending someone an email they didnt ask for
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
...it can't (and won't) be stopped. It probably WILL be taxed, however. When these governments realize how much they could be raking in if there was a postage-like tax on spam messages, they won't be able to resist creating a broad email tax. Think, for instance, how much money postal services must be making off junk mail.
- Bill writes an angry diatribe on slashdot.org. In Bill's user profile is a link to his website, which contains his e-mail address. Joe comes across slashdot and, offended by the diatribe, writes an angry flame in disagreement and e-mails it to Bill. Bill gets upset by this and sues Joe for sending an "unsolicited e-mail".
- Bill writes an angry diatrabe on slashdot.org. In Bill's user profile is a link to his website, which contains his e-mail address. HARVESTER-BOT 3.0 comes across slashdot and, blindly following links, adds Bill's e-mail address to the database of a small business, which then e-mails Bill with an offer for herbal viagra. Bill gets upset by this and sues the business for sending an "unsolicited e-mail".
Seriously, are they actually going to try to put up this directive with no reference to "mass" or "commercial" and without any exceptions, or is this article just poorly written? What about exceptions for, like, accidentally mispelled e-mail addresses? I know that it's highly unlikely people would use the law for that reason, but writing excessively vague laws leads to big problems, as anyone following the DMCA has found.And how would this directive work in the case of some 'business' which gets some bullshit, but legal, excuse for the idea that Bill has entered into a business relationship with it, and then sends Bill spam forever without a clear sign of how to remove himself from their lists? Is there a link to the directive's actual text? Anywhere?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
EU has already made unsolicited commercial email (UCE) illegal, see article 13 of the Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), after intense lobbying e.g. by EuroCAUCE.
The directive must be implemented by the member states by 31 October 2003.
(I just wrote statement [in Finnish] to the Finnish ministry of transports and communications on behalf of Electronic Frontier Finland of our proposed local implementation of the directive (which at the current form would allow ask-permission-spam (i.e. you would be allowed to send spam to ask permission to send more spam. :( )))
How come countries don't have nuclear bomb testing anymore? Because it affects the entire world.
Why don't all the countries come together to eliminate spam like they did with nuclear bombs? The internet is worldwide and it affects us all.
We don't need an ICANN. We don't need a single police force. We just need the countries to come together and recognize that EVERYONE is involved and EVERYONE should do their part.
Both services take about three months to fully kick in following registration.
There's a loophole in the mailing one though, and a comment in another thread some time ago mentioned a way round it. Junk mail may still be delivered to 'The Occupier' by the Royal Mail. Someone a while ago mentioned there was a service to stop this too - haven't been able to find that one. Anybody know?
Cheers,
Ian
Well, Welsh rugby needs saving at the moment, but their soccer team is doing ok.
Ah you meant Whales.
I heard some of the debate in Parliament on Radio 4 last night (I think, I was sleepy). I recall hearing an MP (member of parliament) suggesting in all seriousness that since faxes are supposed to have a reply address, requiring this for email would help matters. His heart is in the right place, no complaints there, but it shows how worryigly easy it is to pass inappropriate technology legislation if the legislators aren't clued up to understand the subtleties.
Currently I put everything from china into my SPAM-folder and by golly, I'll just blacklist every country that doesn't have anti-SPAM laws.
The interesting thing is this: let's say that the U.S. and EU do both ban spam, and all the spam is coming from outside the U.S. and EU. A *lot* of people will react the same way you do.
That is to say, we'll suddenly see a lot more careless e-mail blocks being placed on large swaths of entire countries, some by individuals, and most likely often by ISPs. We already see a LOT of huge e-mail blocks being done by ISPs, especially AOL, without much concern for collateral damage; it isn't inconcievable that a number of random ISPs might just look at their statistics and shortsightedly go, hmm, 90% of our spam comes from (for example) Indonesia, who is going to be talking to people in Indonesia anyway, i'll just block the whole country (or maybe just most of their IP space).
Once this starts happening, internet users and businesses in (for example) Indonesia are suddenly going to start discovering that they are having trouble communicating with the U.S., and this is because of spammers in their country. I find it likely that if this happens, their response will be to complain to their government to do something about the spammers that are making the americans block them... until one day, spam is illegal in indonesia as well, and shortsighted ISPs in indonesia are going, hey, all my spam's coming from Myanmar, why don't i just block e-mail from there..
So if the US or EU ever adopted real antispam laws, it could start a big domino effect that would cause a lot of other countries to adopt antispam laws as well.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
These spammers clearly represent a threat to freedom, diversity and sanctity worldwide. We must be swift and decisive in the coming days. A crippling onslaught of spamming faces us and we must stand proud in its defiance.
We must act with haste to bring these spammers to justice. Must we wait for the "smoking gun" of a mushroom cloud? Victory can only be ours if we crush these spammers with our military might.
</bushspeek>and syria.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
In Denmark we have had a law against unsolicited commercial email for some time. The law was originally against fax spam, but has been extended to cover email too.
> As I read this - and INAL
"I not a linguist" ?
This directive was first published in the middle of last year, I don't know why it's suddenly become newsworthy. The anti-spam campaigners have done well, though. As far as EU companies go, email will be opt-in for the whole European Economic Area (which includes the European Union). I'd like to thank the people who have put in so much effort to bring about this result.
Another interesting legal change comes with the Electronic Commerce Directive, which removes ISP's liability when they are acting as a "mere conduit" for illegal information. This is already in force, and marks the end of Godrey v Demon.
This article is from Jyllands Posten, the largest newspaper in Denmark. I'm quite surprised it hasn't been mentioned on Slashdot, but here's my chance to karma-whore I guess. Freely translated by me, I'm sure some Dane will correct me. [Source] ============= Headline: Expensive to spam Text: In the first case about violating the marketing law regarding spam via email or telefax, the company Fonn Danmark A/S have been handed a fine of 15000 Dkr [= 2020]. More cases are waiting in other juristriction. 100 Dkr [= 13,46] per illegal email or telefax. That's how the Sea- and Merchant Court judged a case against Fonn Danmark A/S for violating the marketing law regarding transmittal of unrequested adverts as email or telefax. The case is the first in Denmark regarding so called spam adverts. Even though the Consumer Ombudsman had demanded 200.000 Dkr [= 26,935] from the Norwegian company, Consumer Ombudsman Hagen Jørgensen is still happy about the fine, which the court settled at 15000 Dkr. "We would have liked to see a larger fine, but considering how small the company is, and the fact that the judgement is for 156 spams only, the fine isn't that bad", says Hagen Jørgensen. Reasons for the size of the fine are many. Amongst others the Sea- and Merchant Court have considered the concrete number of violations, if the company has known about the laws regarding this issue and the size of the company's revenue. Consumers not pleased While the Consumer Ombudsman seems reasonable pleased, the judgement makes Aktive Forbrugere [Active Consumers] shake their heads. "It cannot be considered fair that a company can transmit large amounts of adverts and get off with a fine of 15000 Dkr. Neither can it be considered fair that it is the consumers who need the do something to raise a case like this", says Ole Tange, IT executive at Aktive Forbrugere. In the case versus Fonn Danmark the company has admitted to transmit 10000 to 15000 emails. Nevertheless the judgement considers the 156 documented emails only. Part of the case is that Fonn Danmark several times were told that they were violating 6a of the marketing law, which clearly states that without prior consent, companies are not allowed to contact someone by electronic mail, automatic dialing systems or telefax for the purpose of selling goods or services. In the reminder from the Sea- and Merchant Court it was told that Fonn Danmark was also punished for unnecesarily having stolen peoples' time by forcing them to read and process the unrequested adverts. But Ole Tange feels that the notion of making a distinction because of Fonn Danmark's size and the number of documented spams opens the floodgates for future abuse of spam emails since it is hard to imagine cases where consumers or the Consumer Ombudsman manages to collect the 100000 of emails which are apparently necesary to increase the size of the fine to a level where it becomes unattractive for companies to speculate in spam-emails. With last Thursday's judgement, the Consumer Ombudsman hopes companies will think again before they push the button and send unsolicited emails. Ready for more cases If the companies dare it anyway, the Consumer Ombudsman is ready to sue. If sent by smaller companies, the Ombudsman will typically contact them and remind them of the law, while larger companies will usually face the police immediately, Special Consultant for the Consumer Office Peter Fogh Knudsen tells. He was the one running the case against Fonn Danmark. At the moment, Peter Fogh Knudsen estimates that 3 to 4 similar cases are running in other juristrictions. The Consumer Office also requests Danes to forward spam to spam@fs.dk because that is the most effective way of collecting the documentation for possible violatings of the marketing law. This judgement for the Danish market comes at a time when Microsoft, AOL Time Warner and Yahoo jointly exclaim spam as the largest threat against the IT sector. =============
I signed up with the various *PS preference serviecs but unfortunately still get spam.
The worst one is phone calls. I moved into a rented place a few years back and took over the phone there. Then, when I moved to a house I was actually buying I thought I'd pay the small fee to transfer the number, because everyone knew it by now.
Unfortunately the last person to use the number before me (A Mr. Brown) seems to have signed up to everything in the universe, given them his phone number and not ticked the "Oh God, please do not phone me" box on them all.
So now I get lots of calls that go like this:
spammer: is that mr. brown?
me: no. This has not been mr. brown's number for at least 3 years.
spammer: well, i wonder if you might be interested anyway. we're doing a promotion on gym membership...
me: please remove my number from your database and do not call it again.
So you see, the problem is that the phone number was "tainted" by this Mr. Brown; now all these calls are not technically "unsolicited", because he signed up and gave permission for them to call him.
I have a similar problem with email spam. I actually get very little spam, but nearly all of it is from companies where I used my email address to sign up for something and forgot to tick the damn box for "do not spam me", or from companies who got the email address from them. The reason I continue to get spam from them is because their unsubscribe procedure fails.
OK, that's phone spam and email spam. Now for letter spam. I get lots of this, most of which is unavoidable. Some of it is addressed to the person who lived in the house before me, but most of it is random leaflets advertising stuff that the postal delivery person is forced to deliver along with my mail, or that comes with the local paper (open paper, 5000 leaflets fall out, you know how it goes).
Anyway, my point is that spam, in all forms is not necessarily "unsolicited". It may be unwanted, but it could be that at some point either you or someone before you FAILED TO TICK THE BOX.
graspee
Maybe a new SMTP header can be required to contain the recipient's secret "Solicitor's ID". But then, some money-grubbing person could just delete or alter it and claim to the court that it was never there. I'm not an encryption expert, but there's got to be some way with hashes and PGP or something to prove this.
In the process, you'll first have to prove that the e-mail was actually sent from the sender it claims to be sent from so that you're accusing the right party and the sender can't deny it. Then you'll have to prove that the e-mail's data wasn't somehow altered in transit, whether maliciously or by transmission error, which could botch your methods of authentication.
Another issue is:
By what criteria is an e-mail solicited: sender, subject matter, or both? I might have solicited a receipt from Amazon when I made a purchase, but not Amazon's marketing for related products. I might like to solicit e-mail from anybody about low-priced flat panel monitors, but not any other kind of e-mail from the senders with this material.
And what about combined content? Some solicited, some not. What about domains collectively owned by a number of parties, one of which is on my white list? This thing is going to be a legal quagmire. This legislation is going to have to be thousands of pages long to explain how all of this is going to work.
One more thing... If they require some kind of encryption or special e-mail header, they'll have to make another law requiring all companies and developers who make software with e-mail functionality to change their programs to bundle or imbed whatever special code the government dictates.
Yeah, there's alot of crashes on the big 2 lane road bridge they built from London to Paris. There's a section in the middle of the English Channel where you can drive on either side of the road - and because of this your car insurance is not valid for this 100m section.
in Poland it's already illegal.
Freely translated by me, I'm sure some Dane will correct me. [Source]
=============
Headline: Expensive to spam
Text:
In the first case about violating the marketing law regarding spam via email or telefax, the company Fonn Danmark A/S have been handed a fine of 15000 Dkr [= 2020]. More cases are waiting in other juristrictions.
100 Dkr [= 13,46] per illegal email or telefax.
That's how the Sea- and Merchant Court judged a case against Fonn Danmark A/S for violating the marketing law regarding transmittal of unrequested adverts as email or telefax.
The case is the first in Denmark regarding so called spam adverts.
Even though the Consumer Ombudsman had demanded 200.000 Dkr [= 26,935] from the Norwegian company, Consumer Ombudsman Hagen Jørgensen is still happy about the fine, which the court settled at 15000 Dkr.
"We would have liked to see a larger fine, but considering how small the company is, and the fact that the judgement is for 156 spams only, the fine isn't that bad", says Hagen Jørgensen.
Reasons for the size of the fine are many. Amongst others the Sea- and Merchant Court have considered the concrete number of violations, if the company has known about the laws regarding this issue and the size of the company's revenue.
Consumers not pleased
While the Consumer Ombudsman seems reasonable pleased, the judgement makes Aktive Forbrugere [Active Consumers] shake their heads.
"It cannot be considered fair that a company can transmit large amounts of adverts and get off with a fine of 15000 Dkr. Neither can it be considered fair that it is the consumers who need the do something to raise a case like this", says Ole Tange, IT executive at Aktive Forbrugere.
In the case versus Fonn Danmark the company has admitted to transmit 10000 to 15000 emails. Nevertheless the judgement considers the 156 documented emails only.
Part of the case is that Fonn Danmark several times were told that they were violating 6a of the marketing law, which clearly states that without prior consent, companies are not allowed to contact someone by electronic mail, automatic dialing systems or telefax for the purpose of selling goods or services.
In the reminder from the Sea- and Merchant Court it was told that Fonn Danmark was also punished for unnecesarily having stolen peoples' time by forcing them to read and process the unrequested adverts.
But Ole Tange feels that the notion of making a distinction because of Fonn Danmark's size and the number of documented spams opens the floodgates for future abuse of spam emails since it is hard to imagine cases where consumers or the Consumer Ombudsman manages to collect the 100000 of emails which are apparently necesary to increase the size of the fine to a level where it becomes unattractive for companies to speculate in spam-emails.
With last Thursday's judgement, the Consumer Ombudsman hopes companies will think again before they push the button and send unsolicited emails.
Ready for more cases
If the companies dare it anyway, the Consumer Ombudsman is ready to sue. If sent by smaller companies, the Ombudsman will typically contact them and remind them of the law, while larger companies will usually face the police immediately, Special Consultant for the Consumer Office Peter Fogh Knudsen tells. He was the one running the case against Fonn Danmark.
At the moment, Peter Fogh Knudsen estimates that 3 to 4 similar cases are running in other juristrictions.
The Consumer Office also requests Danes to forward spam to spam@fs.dk because that is the most effective way of collecting the documentation for possible violatings of the marketing law.
This judgement for the Danish market comes at a time when Microsoft, AOL Time Warner and Yahoo jointly exclaim spam as the largest threat against the IT sector.
=============
"The envelope is the part of message that contains information such as the sender, the subject, from where the message came, and so on."
Huh? I thought the envelope just contained things like MAIL FROM: and RCPT TO:. The body (DATA) contains all the other headers such as subject and from. See how the from field can be different between the envelope and headers, although most MUAs don't allow this even if the MTA does.
Try telneting in to an SMTP server and yourself emails. You'll find that you can create all the headers you want in the DATA section - just leave a blank line between them and the body of the message.
I beleive it is "I not an linguist