Posted on June 30th, 2010Inboxes around the world are consistently clogged due to the massive amount of spam sent out each day. While spam filters and blockers eliminate a good portion of unsolicited emails, there are still many that slide through. As a result, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and the European community have all enacted different types of spam legislation.
Why is Spam Legislation Necessary?
Spam is said to make up over 65 percent of all email messages sent and received. The overall cost of spam to companies, internet service providers, individuals and email marketers is in the tens of billions of dollars. This cost factors in lost productivity, high bandwidth consumption, boosted storage costs and legal liabilities amongst employees.
Internet service providers suffer from a decrease in bandwidth and storage space and a decline in retention from unsatisfied customers leading to an overall loss of reputation among subscribers. In turn, these factors result in internet service provider operating costs to proliferate, thus increasing prices for the customer.
Furthermore, email marketers that run a legitimate operation must be constantly adjusting their business methods due to ever-changing regulations. Also, their product loses significant value because customers might believe their emails are also spam.
Three Major Pieces of Spam Legislation
There are three primary pieces of spam legislation setup by three different countries. These include:
- The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN SPAM) – United States
- The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003 (EC Directive) – United Kingdom
- The Spam Act of 2003 – Australia
CAN SPAM
CAN SPAM was designed in 2003 to limit the number of email spam messages since more than half of spam correspondence originates in the United States. This legislation forbids companies and individuals from distributing multiple email messages containing false header information, false identities, sexually-oriented material, address harvesting or hijacking various aspects of a computer system.
The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003
Otherwise known as the EC Directive, this law prohibits individuals from sending unsolicited communications related to direct marketing unless the recipient has been previously notified of by the sender of any correspondence.
The Spam Act 2003
This act was designed to control the increase in unsolicited emails. This does not target bulk emails originating in other countries. Rather, it focuses on implementing consequences for organizations that send emails for commercial purposes. Commercial messages must incorporate accurate sender information and contain a functional unsubscribe function.
While these may not eliminate spam altogether, they could deter individuals and organizations. Combining spam legislation with spam blockers and filters might decrease the amount of messages sent lowering the cost as well as improving productivity across the globe.