UK Spam Law Goes Live

loonix_gangsta writes "So, the UK has taken matters into its own hands and, as of today, is making it a criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them. The law comes into force today. Unfortunately much spam originates from the US so the UK had previously asked the US to co-operate."

Comments

Problems already

[JamesD_UK]

The register is running an interesting article on the difficulty people have had so far reporting their spam. It appears that the paperwork and procedures for complaints are not yet available. How useful.

Appplies to the whole EU

[theolein]

This law is an EU wide law and therefore applies to all member countries, including from next year (2004) at least some of the Spammers favourite countries such as Poland, Estonia etc.

Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US.

[gorbachev]

The spam sent from China and Korea is overwhelmingly sent by US based spammers exploiting the widespread open proxy problem in the Far East.

The other major source of spam from the Far East are the "bulletproof" spamming facilities provided to US based career spammers by greedy Chinese administrators.

It is not that difficult at all to track who is responsible for the spam, just see who's being advertised.

In addition, most of these types of spam has a "fingerprint" that pinpoints the spam to some career spammer. The fingerprint can be a domain name, method of operandi, language in the spam, anything really. Resources like ROKSO at spamhaus.org are very good at identifying the real source of the spam.

Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers. The more painful and slower, the better.

Re:This bothers me a bit.

[gorbachev]

Geez, just leave that somethingawful.com non-event out of this.

The script kiddies at SA just went on a hissy fit due to being hosted by a blatant spam supporter. There was no overzealous blocklisting.

Law excludes businesses

[JawFunk]

According to this link "But the regulations do not cover business e-mail addresses, despite some calls for a blanket ban on spam."

Interestingly enough, businesses suffer most from spam, not only in jamming traffic and exhausting space on mail servers, but also losing money on employees sorting through or reading spam mail.

Link to the actual Law

[twoshortplanks]

Rather than listening people spouting off all over the place, and getting my infomation second hand, I like to actually read::

The Law

as published by the government itself.

Re:Link to the actual Law

[jonathan_ingram]

And here's the section which applies to electronic mail:

Use of electronic mail for direct marketing purposes

22. - (1) This regulation applies to the transmission of unsolicited communications by means of electronic mail to individual subscribers.

(2) Except in the circumstances referred to in paragraph (3), a person shall neither transmit, nor instigate the transmission of, unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing by means of electronic mail unless the recipient of the electronic mail has previously notified the sender that he consents for the time being to such communications being sent by, or at the instigation of, the sender.

(3) A person may send or instigate the sending of electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing where -

(a) that person has obtained the contact details of the recipient of that electronic mail in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service to that recipient;

(b) the direct marketing is in respect of that person's similar products and services only; and

(c) the recipient has been given a simple means of refusing (free of charge except for the costs of the transmission of the refusal) the use of his contact details for the purposes of such direct marketing, at the time that the details were initially collected, and, where he did not initially refuse the use of the details, at the time of each subsequent communication.

(4) A subscriber shall not permit his line to be used in contravention of paragraph (2).

Use of electronic mail for direct marketing purposes where the identity or address of the sender is concealed

23. A person shall neither transmit, nor instigate the transmission of, a communication for the purposes of direct marketing by means of electronic mail -

(a) where the identity of the person on whose behalf the communication has been sent has been disguised or concealed; or

(b) where a valid address to which the recipient of the communication may send a request that such communications cease has not been provided.

And the explanatory notes for these sections:

Regulations 20, 21 [on fax machine marketing] and 22 set out the circumstances in which persons may transmit, or instigate the transmission of, unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing by means of facsimile machine, make unsolicited calls for those purposes, or transmit unsolicited communications by means of electronic mail for those purposes. Regulation 22 (electronic mail) applies only to transmissions to individual subscribers (the term "individual" means "a living individual" and includes "an unincorporated body of such individuals").

Regulation 23 prohibits the sending of communications by means of electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing where the identity of the person on whose behalf the communication is made has been disguised or concealed or an address to which requests for such communications to cease may be sent has not been provided.

Just in denial!

[LuxFX]

But new research suggests most top UK websites are already breaking the new rules.
"Companies are either not aware of the legislation, or are ignoring it," said Ian Thomas from WebAbacus.

Perhaps in some cases, but it others I'm not so sure it's either. I think some companies are just in denial about sending spam. Sounds hard to believe, right? Well, I run a small web design company, and I specifically put a No Spam clause in my contracts. When I talk about this with clients, I get some pretty sad responses.

They are all shocked that I would suggest that they would spam -- because most of them think that 'spam' only refers to the pornography, penis/breast enlargement, Nigerian scam, fraudulent products, etc. emails. In their eyes, "we're just sending out a promotional email, it isn't spam!" When I ask them if they will only send emails to people who have requested it, the response is typically, "We have to send out to more people than that! We are planning on buying a list of email addresses from (fill-in-the-blank-"marketing"-operation) and using that. That's ok, right?"

Now I'm not talking about companies that knowingly hire spammers to do their marketing, I'm talking about the smaller companies that try to do it themselves, or maybe are convinced of the legality from a spammer wanting some more business, and end up becoming part of the spam problem with their purchased lists and "but we offer a legitimate service!" attitudes.

These people are just in denial.

Re:Just in denial!

[alanxyzzy]

But new research suggests most top UK websites are already breaking the new rules. "Companies are either not aware of the legislation, or are ignoring it," said Ian Thomas from WebAbacus.

This refers to another part of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which deals with cookies.
More in this BBC report
There is more detail in the PDF files at the Office of the Information Commissioner

Applies, but has not taken effect

[kaan]

The law does apply to the entire EU, but it has not taken effect EU-wide, as it is up to each member of the EU to follow through. The UK has moved forward, but most of the other members (list below) have not. It's also not clear that they ever will.

From The Register:

The directive obliged individual EC member states to introduce anti-spam laws by October 31. However nine member nations of the 15 country European Union have so far failed to adopt anti-spam legislation. France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden all face possible court action unless they provide an explanation on their lack of progress within the next two months. Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK have already taken steps to adopt the EU law.

Re:Applies, but has not taken effect

[GammaTau]

Interesting. Finland has had anti-spam legislation since 1999, opt-in for individuals and opt-out for companies. Its enforcement and interpretation has been a problem, though. I believe a new law is being drafted (or is it already proposed?).

At the moment the law is being processed in the parliamentary committees. As far as I understand, the law will probably bring no signigicant changes to spam legislation (although the law itself covers many areas other than spam). EFFI has been heard in the process and their latest statement (in Finnish) on the law looks good.

Re:maximum what?

[Zocalo]

The "UKP 5000" quote is a bit misleading since there are basically two types of prosecution under the law; before a magistrate and no jury (I'm not sure what the US equivalent is called, but I know there is one) then the maximum fine is indeed UKP 5000 *per prosecution*. If you go to court proper with a judge and jury then there is no limit on the potential fine. There is also the issue of court costs, but I would expect that if found guilty the spammer would be required to pay in both cases.

Re:Unfortunately much spam originates from the US.

[anthony_dipierro]

I'd actually like to see a few people found guilty of this and fined a negligable amount on the grounds they were "less than technically competent" or whatever legal euphemism for "dumb" the court comes up with.

That euphemism would be "negligent," at least here in the US.

Opinion from people who know

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what Spamhaus have to say about the new law.

Not very encouraging...

Re:Shutting out the worst offenders

[ynohoo]

Please don't "bounce the e-mail with some kind of message". My yahoo email address is currently being "borrowed" by some spammer as their from-address, resulting in such bounce messages coming to me. It's very tedious.

Re:And yet...

[radish]

It only replies to marketing mail sent from a company to an individual, without his/her prior consent or a prior business relationship existing. Seems pretty clear to me.

Re:This could help spammers.. ?

[IIH]

I've been job hunting recently and have sent several resumes to people with whom I've had no previous contact, generally having gotten their addresses from their friends who suggested I contact them. Including in the UK. Would I be eligible for prosecution under this law?

The law is for "unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing", so the point you raise is moot.

Paperwork now available

[dazed-n-confused]

The paperwork/procedure is available now, from this site.

It's ineffectual paperwork, naturally -- and to use it you have to be able to read documents created in a secret proprietary format (MS Word) -- but then, just look at the ineffectual law it's supporting!

Yup, looks like the politicians have dropped the ball again...