China Signs Anti-Spam Pact

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Chinese government has joined an international anti-spam effort started by the U.S. and UK. Over the weekend China stated that it would join international enforcement efforts against spam by adopting the London Action Plan on Spam Enforcement Collaboration. The London Action Plan was launched after a conference on spam enforcement hosted jointly by the UK Office of Fair Trading and the US Federal Trade Commission in London in October 2004. It was the first international forum to focus exclusively on spam enforcement. China is well known for being one of the biggest origins of spam, with as much as 20% of all junk e-mail originating from within its borders."

Comments

Re:Easy Solution!

[grub]

I'm assuming your friend's school has no Chinese students that would never need to keep in touch with family and friends back home? If I tried that at my workplace I'd be keelhauled (on a junk, but keelhauled nonetheless)

Ulterior Motives?

[twifosp]

I wonder how much of China's decision had to do with actual spam, rather than an additional form of information control.

Spam could potentially provide China's citizens with additional knowledge the government doesn't want them to know about.

It also cuts down on the amount of bulk China has to process to know what's happening with "its" internet. If China doesn't have to contend with spam, it can devote more resources to scanning their citizens software for disent.

Hey, I just thought of something: Maybe spam isn't a malicious, egregious and unsolicited marketing technique after all! Maybe it's just those countries trying to clog the internet filters with junk so they can disguise their normal communications. Spam is freeeeedom! If you try to squash spam, you're just one of them!

The revolution exists in penis enlargers and pain killers and we didn't even know it!

Yeah, like China really cares about the rule of la

[ShatteredDream]

And how many extrajudicial executions still happen in China? How about the laogai? Buy something at Wal-Mart lately? Well it could have been made with slave^H^H^H^H^Hprison labor. Tibet, the Uhigurs in Western China, the censorship of the internet, their bellicosity toward Taiwan, aborting babies because they're girls and more. Oh and they pretty much let their hackers take pot shots at the US' infrastructure with maybe a slap on the wrist.

The US, EU and Japan aren't perfect, but they are a lot better than China. For my money, I blame it on the "middle kingdom complex." Let's be realistic, China doesn't even really pretend to care about any law other than what it creates, and even that is flimsy as there are numerous loopholes for the state to get out of trouble with. China isn't going to really do anything to stop spammers unless it means they might not get the 2008 olympics or they might lose their MFN status in the US and neither of those will happen over spam.

Move on kids, this is just another feel good thing by the politicians. Nothing to see here that you couldn't see on C-Span.