Re: [anti-spam-wg@ripe.net] European Spam Laws are 'meaningless'

[Esa Laitinen <]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 09:13:27PM +0100, Mally Mclane wrote:
> The rogue nations - Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Luxembourg, the
> Netherlands, Portugal and Finland - have been threatened with legal
> action.

To call Finland rogue might be correct in the context of the directive, 
but not necessary in regarding laws governing spam.

The problem of Finland when regarding spam is enforcement: the laws 
prohibit collecting private information without the consent of the 
individual (e-mail address, for example, is private information), and 
they prohibit sending commercials to persons who have not given their 
consent.

Unfortunately for example one shop selling spare parts for Opel only 
got: "you must destroy the database immediately and don't do that 
again". Not only did they admit that they spammed, they also admitted 
that they used one of those "99 million addresses on a cd".

Even good laws are not enough if they're not enforced.

esa
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