There may be a small rash of newly proposed anti-spam legislation in the United States, with at least five new such bills in recent weeks, but one of the world's most active spam fighters thinks those laws, if passed and enacted, will actually send spam through the roof rather than to the cybercemetery.
"All the spammers support the current bills going through the U.S. Senate because they will help spam," said Spamhaus founder-director Steve Linford to the All Party Internet Group Spam Summit. "They all want the government to pass an opt-out law to force consumers to opt out of receiving spam. They will legalize spam. The worst thing you can do is legalize it."
Spamhaus and other spam-fighting groups have held that unless spam legislation features mandatory and confirmable opt-in allowance, spam won't be stopped but will be increased under the proposed new laws. Without verifiable opt-ins, these groups have said, third parties can opt in for any computer user whether or not the user would have chosen to do so.
E-Commerce Times estimates about 50 million bulk e-mail pieces are sent every day by professional operations. The journal also says about two hundred operations send 90 percent of all spam, with about one hundred of them setting up operations in China, where they pay "rock bottom prices" to Internet service providers to distribute their spam.
Linford, in fact, told the Group Spam Summit that China has been monitoring American and European spam legislation and might well adopt one of those models for its own law. But he fears the Chinese might prefer the American model to the European Union's coming Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive on October 31, which will make it illegal to send unsolicited e-mail to individuals in EU nations, E-Commerce Times said.
Following the American model would "be a total disaster," Linford said. "If the U.S. does bring in an opt-out law then spam will go through the roof. We need to drive the 200 (professional operations) underground, and then we can use technology to mop them up."
