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Privacy Spam Your Rights Online

French Legislators Vote to Ban Spam 70

Posted by timothy from the this-could-burn-some-legit-mail-too dept.
mlawmlaw writes "The Herald is reporting that France's National Assembly has voted 'in favor of banning unsolicited e-mail sales messages.' This is an admendment to a law to 'increase confidence in the digital economy.' This would ban 'direct marketing, notably advertising, via electronic messages' to individuals who had not given consent. The article is light on details, but it's nice to see France taking a step to reduce spam."
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French Legislators Vote to Ban Spam More

French Legislators Vote to Ban Spam

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  • The article is light on details, but it's nice to see France taking a step to reduce spam.

    Yeah, that's just what we need -- governments passing laws to outlaw things that the majority of the population doesn't like. I wonder other unpopular things they're looking at banning. At least Ashcroft hasn't labeled spammers as enemy combatants engaged in cyberterrorism and shipped them all off to Guantonomo Bay without a trial -- yet.

    Surely there must be a way to reduce spam without getting governments involved.

    GMD

    • Surely there must be a way to reduce spam without getting governments involved.

      It's called vigilanteism. Let's all gang up on the bastards and give them a little taste of community justice. 'Cause if it isn't against the law, what other incentive do they have to stop.
    • It isn't just a matter of not liking spam, it is a matter of what spam is doing to ISPs, and how useful the e-mail will be to everyone in the future. Spam drains massive ammounts of resources from servers and bandwidth. The complaint againt spam isn't just "oh, I don't like it!" It is also causing big problems for a lot of people.

    • Re:Keep the government out of this (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, I'm sure spamming already falls under the new definition of terrorism in the U.S. After all, getting together in a public place with a few buddies will qualify you as one. Making any effort to "coerce" the population qualifies you as one. I'm sure spamming qualifies under that category.

    • Re:Keep the government out of this (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I heard they are building a Maginot Firewall.
  • Am I the only one that's thinking the french will fold once the spammers declare war on them? :)
  • It's obvious they're anti-spam because it's an American invention. In fact, I think George Bush invented it (shortly after Gore invented the internet).

  • No way to enforce thhis (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @12:58PM (#5397732)
    I am completely in agreement with the idea of outlawing spam and have long wished for such a law in the US. Unfortunately, the more I think about it, the more I realize, there's just no way to enforce such a law.

    First, in order to enforce such a law you would have to create some sort of governmental agency where you would send your spam complaints and they would go after the spammers. This, of course, results in the creation of another bloated government bureaucracy fincanced by your tax dollars. This raises a number of issues -- not the least of which is "how much benefit will you really get in return for the millions of dolars that will be spent".

    The second problem, and the most frustrating, is one that I have run into in my own attempts at fighting spam. When I trace the IP addresses of the spam which arrives in my inbox daily, I find that more and more are originating from foreign countries, including Korea, China, Spain and Brazil.

    So, no matter how tough your anti-spam law may be, it's worthless when spammers cant take advantage of open relays in foreign countries.
    • > Unfortunately, the more I think about it, the > more I realize, there's just no way to enforce > such a law. there is no way to enforce it in a grand scale; but at least ISP's will be able to do a little more than just cut connections when they find abusers of their networks. At least this way, if you ever check the senders IP to be from France, you can contact the ISP in charge and log a complaint which may be followed up legally (at least partial evidence in a legal case)... only problem is, we need to speak french; you all know how they can be ;-D (and rightly so!)

    • Re:No way to enforce thhis (Score:4, Informative)

      by jalet ( 36114 ) <alet@librelogiciel.com> on Thursday February 27, 2003 @03:55PM (#5399850) Homepage
      > First, in order to enforce such a law you would
      > have to create some sort of governmental agency
      > where you would send your spam complaints

      Fortunately for us, in France, we already have such an agency since 1978. It's called the CNIL (http://www.cnil.fr) for "Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés" (National Commission for Computing an Liberties), and principally deals with privacy issues and personnal information storage and retrieval.

      Last year they opened a spam mailbox, for people to forward them spam messages, expecting about ten messages a day or so, but in a few days the mailbox quota exploded with more than 65000 messages...

      Now they ARE aware !
    • You don't need a new government agency. If it's illegal to spam then law enforcement should take care of it, just like any other crime.

      Tracing the spam is indeed diffcult, but the police wouldn't have to use that approach. They could instead "follow the money." Since every spam has a payment button, you just have to send them some money and arrest the person who receives the money.

      Think of how law enforcement would act if somebody was selling kiddie porn or assasinations or drugs. They could use the same method when dealing with spammers, if the laws were properly written.

      Complain to your congressman, not your ISP!
  • I guess the French government is not owned by the corporations? Man, that is refreshing. Where did they come up with that one. Shit, I'll drop my rifle and run any day for that.
  • at least they can take a stand on SOMETHING...

    but seriously, why would france want to attack its best oil supplier? they aren't chickens, they're smart business men who just happen to deal with tryannical dictators.

    • Re:finally... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by freestyle-fiend ( 633507 )
      > but seriously, why would france want to attack its
      > best oil supplier?

      Also, US oil companies stand to gain from this war. If it is acceptable for the US to act in its own commercial interests, then why is it not acceptable for France to protect its business? (I am not saying the right course of action will not coincide with anyone's business interests, just that the parties involved have too much of a conflict of interest to be trusted).

      > they aren't chickens, they're
      > smart business men who just happen to deal with
      > tryannical dictators.

      Much like US governments who have illegally overthrown democratically elected governments in the name of democracy, supported Saddam Hussein when it suited them to, funded Al Qaeda, backed Isreal's war of aggression against Palestine, permitted its citizens to fund terrorism against Britain, supported dictators in Saudi Arabia and human rights violations in Turkey and imposed poverty on Cuba through unwarranted sanctions. All done in accordance with US business interests.
  • This would ban 'direct marketing, notably advertising, via electronic messages' to individuals who had not given consent.

    The problem with legislation like this is that most people opt-in on a specific site, but that list gets sold. You don't know what the buyers are using that information for so consent was given, but not necessarily to the people sending. US laws have a very similar problem.

    • In Europe, we have data protection law (google for Data Protection Act to see Britain's implementation, but it's an EU thing, so the other European countries have very similar laws with the same purpose).

      Companies that deal with "personally identifiable information" have to be registered with a central authority (the Data Protection Registrar, a government office), and have to give a reason why they want to keep the information. If a company passes on the information, or even just uses it for something other than its original purpose, they're already breaking the law, so no new law is necessary.

      (The registration thing might be different outside Britain, but the principle is probably the same in France)
  • You can always count on the French to take the idealistic option.
  • This means war! Oh wait ...
  • First, let me state that I hate spam as much as anyone else, and would very much like to see it disappear. But let me play devil's adovcate for a second. One thought has occured to me:

    How is spam different than bulk mail? You still have to look at it, still have to throw it in the trash, and still don't read the messages inside. And what are the complaints against spam? "It wastes server space. It wastes bandwidth." Oh, now those are certainly precious, non-renable resources. Not like the millions of trees that are cut down daily for bulk mail. (Yes, I'm ignoring the cost difference, but the point is still the same)

    Just wondering.... Btw, is there any reason we (or the French) can't outlaw any type of unsolicited (e)mail?

    • Re:The Irony (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DroppedPacket ( 621464 )
      How is spam different than bulk mail?

      Let me count the ways... And you did itemize some of them.

      Bulk mail (i.e. junk mail) is sender paid

      I get more Spam than junk mail

      Junk mail isn't always trying to sell me sex. Er, ignore the Victoria's Secret catalog for a minute. That's literature

      I can always find out who sent me junk mail

      I get junk mail once a day. I get Spam throughout the day.

      Spam clogs the internet and slows down the transfer of useful pr0n

      Faked headers and bounces, etc., can lead to a lot of wasted disk space and admin time, overflow of legitimate mailboxes, etc.

    • Re:The Irony (Score:2, Informative)

      by mcmay ( 59905 )
      First: Bulk snail mail is controlled in other civilized countries like the Netherlands. You can put a sticker on your mail slot to say you don't want to receive it. Just because something is a certain way does not suggest that it or its derivatives should be that way. That's called a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy.

      Second: The resources consumed in snail mail are compensated for in the form of postage to the carrier. It is comparatively zero cost to the recipient. Spam is paid for by people providing service to themselves, not to the person or bot sending the spam.

      And then there's the situation regarding sites being bombarded with spam. I've received hundreds of messages in a tight timeframe (i.e., minutes). That's different from the onesie-twosie nature of most bulk snail mail. I suspect that if some jackass started walking up to your mailbox and stuffing it with 300 letters, all requiring sorting and inspection to ensure that good email isn't being thrown out unread, you'd probably be begging for this kind of restriction in The Real World(tm) as well.

  • More Proof (Score:1, Troll)

    by bwt ( 68845 )

    I'm surprised that France didn't ask for more proof that spam was a problem.

    On the other hand, what happens if you ignore France and keep violating the law? Are you guaranteed they'll perpetually seek a "diplomatic solution"?
  • "It wasn't selling anything, it was offering a free tour!"
    useless law.
  • yeah, but it has strings attached such as making ISP responsible for policing user web sites (hell, think about censorship coming). more info here [linuxfr.org] (in French, but you can have a good laugh using google translation services ;-) )
  • Let's ban drugs, that'll make them disappear forever.

    Government just never learns from its past, does it ?

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