Spammer Sued Under EU Law

IngramJames writes "A British businessman has successfully sued a company who sent him a spam email. The case was settled out of court, so is not binding, but it's promising that the spammers had to cough up £300 for a single email! It's being reported (in a much more readable way) on The Register and the BBC." From the BBC article: "Three years ago the EU passed an anti-spam law, the directive on privacy and telecommunications, which gave individuals the right to fight the growing tide of unwanted e-mail by allowing them to claim damages."

Comments

Re:Nice job...

[rcw-work]

Thats technically an opt-in

If the default is to receive email - the user has to go out of their way to not receive email - exactly how is that opt-in?

Clue: If you have a mailing list of people who don't really want to be on it, it probably isn't an opt-in mailing list.

Re:anti-spam laws

[Conor Turton]

But i cannot see the difference between paper or electronic multi marketing.

Then you're a blithering idiot. One costs them money, the other costs them nothing. One they'll target, the other they'll just send to anywhere.

And imho this is another stupid law the EU passed before thinking about it

Actually, it's a very well thought out one. We also have others here such as a the Telephone Preference Service where you can register that you don't want sales calls and if a company subsequently cold calls, you can report them and have them fined.