France Launches Anti-Spam Platform

njondet writes "French-law.net reports that the French government has just launched 'Signal Spam', an anti-spam platform created in association with public entities and private companies, such as Microsoft. Internet users will be able to report spam messages by mailing them to this platform which will act as a centralised monitor of spamming activities. The platform will generate a blacklist and help initiate prosecutions against spammers."

Comments

Reinventing the wheel?

[Arkaic]

This seems like an unnecessary duplication of effort. There are already established providers of blacklists, such as spamcop. Why not work with them and help develop easier ways for users to report spam via their email client?

Re:Reinventing the wheel?

[mat]

The goal is not to build another blacklist database, but to take legal actions against (french) spammers.

more like ENABLE-SPAM Act ..

[rs232]

'having this information sent directly to authorities will result in more prosecutions .. under laws similar to CAN-SPAM'

CAN-SPAM doesn't ban SPAM, what it does do is legitimise the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail and specifically forbids e-mail recipients from suing the spammers. It's one of those Acts that do the exact opposite of what the name means. As such it should really be called the ENABLE-SPAM Act of 2003.

was Re:Better as a Private Service?

Re:more like ENABLE-SPAM Act ..

[Phroggy]

CAN-SPAM doesn't ban SPAM, what it does do is legitimise the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail and specifically forbids e-mail recipients from suing the spammers. It's one of those Acts that do the exact opposite of what the name means. As such it should really be called the ENABLE-SPAM Act of 2003. Not quite. CAN-SPAM does legitimize the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail with certain restrictions, but it also clearly defines e-mail that doesn't meet those requirements as being illegal. Virtually every single piece of spam I get violates the requirements of CAN-SPAM and is therefore illegal under US law. If CAN-SPAM were aggressively enforced, it would have a huge impact in reducing the amount of spam that gets sent. Any spam that is legal under CAN-SPAM is trivially easy to filter out through technical means, and if we did start to see legal spam, Congress could simply amend the law to address the problem.

To reiterate: while CAN-SPAM does define certain types of spam as legitimate, that's OK because none of the spam being sent is that kind of spam. If this changes, the law can be fixed later.

However, you are correct that CAN-SPAM also prohibits individuals from suing spammers. If the government were doing its job and aggressively prosecuting them, then private lawsuits would be redundant and unnecessary, and I'm sure that was the original thinking. However, that's not happening. That's a problem.