Australian Rules to Crackdown on Spam

siffty writes "Internet service providers could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose email sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog. The Australian Communications and Media Authority ( ACMA Media Release ) today registered the world's first legislative code of practice for internet and email service providers. Dealing with unsolicited email or spam costs business and home internet users millions of dollars each year in wasted time and upgrading security systems. But under the new code, ISPs will have to offer spam filtering options to subscribers and provide a system of handling complaints. They will also have to impose reasonable limits on the rate at which subscribers can send email."

Comments

Re:Running the Stats

[phukraut]

They probably mean the average rate, which can be determined from a sample. This can be used to estimate the rate of the population of spam.

Re:Telstra

[Paska]

> I'm wondering if this would have gone ahead if Telstra was still owned by the Government. They're our biggest ISP.

51.8% of Telstra is owned by the Australia Government, that gives them the majority share.

Re:Total internet clusterfuck down under

[dbIII]

Is it just me or is Australia's internet regulation the most inadvertently fucked up system in place?

Yes, and to make it even more ironic we control the Christmas Island domain ".cx" as well and the PM's son was a spammer. Making noise about internet regulation has been a way to get the merchant in the temple sort of imitation religeous freaks on side, since the federal government is not run by a single party but a mainly right wing coalition and needed various weirdos in the senate.

The other complicating factor is the efforts over the last decade to sell off the government communications infrastucture, which has been complicated by appointing management that refuses to work for the shareholders and directors and keeps on importing more and more of his friends to divide up the corpse of the government communications infrastructure. As a result even the infrastructure in Estonia - which is actually building stuff as distinct from Australia - is edging furthur ahead and regulation is getting weird and counterproductive. For $200 per month and less than 15km from the CBD of a state capital you would expect better than 1500/256kbs to be available to a business site in a major industrial park - but more would require the mostly government corporation (Telstra) to upgrade their exchange and perhaps even add in more lines.

Re:Total internet clusterfuck down under

[Marlor]

They will eventually get the ISPs under the government's thumb. Whether it be through direct laws requiring certain filtering features or through oversight-free regulation via governmental agencies, they will succumb.

This regulation was primarily developed by Australia's Internet Industry Association (which is made up of ISPs), working together with the Australian Government. The IIA have made it clear that this was primarily their work, as part of their spam-fighting measures. So, the Government is not "getting the ISPs under their thumb", this was just a way to codify best-practices, and ensure that all ISPs adhere to them.

The code of practice seems pretty fair to me. The only that could affect customers would be the mailing limits, and this would only be an issue if you were running a high-volume mailing list. But if this is the case, it would probably be courteous to inform the ISP anyway, and I'm sure that they could remove the limits on mail sending if you had a legitimate reason why you needed to send large volumes of mail.