EUropeans Fight Against Spam

Dateline 03/08/99

The European Union is trying to regulate junk mail. EUropeans who think the measures are not reaching far enough can sign a petition for effective anti-spam legislation.

"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress."

Mahatma Ghandi

EU-wide Spam Regulation

For the European Parliament, spam has become an issue. The legislative and economic committee is currently working on a legal liability guideline. Among other things it also tries to regulate commercial bulk email.

The current form of the guideline reads like legalization rather than regulation, however. It asks that "commercial communication via electronic mail should be clearly recognizable as such" and that the sender of such messages can be clearly identified so that recipients can react to the mass mail and request not to receive any more.

The Petition

This is also what the German computer magazine c't and politik-digital, an online information and communication platform, think. They also see the potential of an EU-wide legislation on spam.

Thus, they set up a petition. Named "Vote against SPAM!" it strives at modifying the guideline to speak a clear language.

Strictly Opt-In

The petition calls for a clear opt-in scheme: "commercial e-mail advertising may only be sent to users as long as they have agreed to receive it." period.

Free speech is not as much an issue in the EU as it is in the U.S. -- both legislatively and ideologically. Still it is hard for me to detect any problems concerning free speech with the opt-in model.

A Central List for Rent

The registry of email addresses of users who agreed to receive certain commercial emails would be kept by an independent office.

As an alternative to personal sign-up the petition would allow ISPs to enter their users' email addresses for receipt of certain email -- but only if the user agreed to that policy. This ensures that the online marketers' fear that nobody knows the opt-in lists do exist will not come true.

Both the independent office and the ISPs offer their lists for rental. Advertisers get high quality mailing lists of people who are interested in what they offer.

The Petition's Chance

Time will tell how many citizens of the EU sign the petition and what effect it will have on eventual legislation. A chance to exercise some influence does certainly exist.

A guideline such as this legal liability guideline is not effective in the member states of the EU directly but requires the individual countries to "translate" its goals into national legislation. In most cases there is hardly a latitude for national legislative powers, however.

While the European Parliament is not (yet?) the legislator of the EU it has an influence on the law-finding process ranging from substantial to little depending on the subject. The lawmaker is the Council.