Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

["Clive D.W. Feather" <]

Piet Beertema said:
> I sense a truly immense lot of wishful thinking here.

True.

> First of all there's a wild variety of user mailers,
> lots of which don't allow users to add X- header lines.
> Go tell it the developers of those mailers.

Irrelevant if a law requires X-UCE headers.

> Second, the EC Directive by definition applies only to
> the EC [Member States]. But reality is that the vast
> majority of the spam comes from the USA, and users out
> there are in no way bound to some EC Directive.

True.

> Third, spammers hide themselves and cover their tracks.
> No EC Directive is going to change that.

Some will be deterred by the fact that they will be committing an offence.
Some will not.

> Fourth, spam will be around as long as people can make
> money out of it. And that includes ISP's.

Trueish.

> Fifth, when spammers would be allowed to identify their
> messages with "UCE" or some such, it would by definition
> become a marketing tool, and no longer be spam. Hence
> people would *have to* indicate whether or not they
> want to receive it. Which means that the filtering would
> have to be done by the user, *not* by his/her ISP: it
> might well even become illegal for the ISP to do such
> filtering!

False. The user can authorise the ISP to filter on her behalf. And I see
nothing requiring the ISP to offer an unfiltered feed either.

Spam *is* a marketing tool. That does not stop it being spam.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather       | Email: clive@localhost   | Tel: +44 1733 705000
Regulation Officer       | Home:  clive@localhost |  or: +44 973 377646
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