Re: [anti-spam-wg@localhost] European Spam Laws are 'meaningless'

[Martin Neitzel <]

\m> Germany has passed the bill last month.  Individuals are not allowed
\m> to take legal actions based on this bill against spammers, as there is
\m> fear the German courts will not be able to handle the load, so spam is
\m> only banned for violation of competition rules.

MN> [...]  I can not remember to have seen traces of the old
MN> UWG-1998:13(2)1.-4. (``only companies and consumer organisations can
MN> complain'') in the proposal.   [...]  I'll try to check this further
MN> tonight when I go home where my copy is.

I checked and /Maex is correct in the first part.  13(2) got essentially
renumbered to 8(3) in the new version, continuing the rules that
individuals may not complain about UWG offenses directly.

The rationale for this given by the proposers in their draft is not that
``courts wouldn't handle the load'', though.  Individual complaints had
indeed been suggested by a subgroup of the working group.  The reasoning
leading to their final rejection is this:

	The UWG intends to establish a high bar of proper/fair
	conduct and through this good consumer protection.  For the
	enterprises, though, a higher bar also means a higher risk when
	doing business.  Entitling everybody to complaints would make the
	risk unpredictable, discouring people from doing business at all.

	Keeping this risk acceptable is achieved by keeping the number
	of possible complainants low.  This was regarded as favourable
	compared with the alternate approach to damp the business risk:
	a less-demanding UWG which requires only low standards.

I did my best to re-state the (quite longer) german legaleeze into
something comsumptionable on this list, but please don't sue me.  I would
also appreciate summaries of the legal state of affairs in other RIPE
and non-RIPE countries.

References for those who want to wade through this (in German):
http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/15/014/1501487.pdf  (October 2003 draft, readble)
http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/15/027/1502795.pdf  (diffs to the adopted law)

							Martin Neitzel