Published reports in the Asian and Asian Pacific press indicated Taiwanese lawmakers passed an anti-spam bill January 19 that would make spam sending a crime and slap monetary damages against spammers that could go as high as in the millions.
A spam recipient could ask for damage losses between $500 and $2,000 per e-mail from the sender, with the damage ceiling expected to be a total of $20 million, under the proposed law.
Spammers would also be required to pay the amount they profit from sending the spam if the amount asked for by recipients exceeds the $20 million ceiling.
The law also required mass commercial e-mailers to offer receivers an opt-out clause and specify in subject lines that what they send is commercial advertising, using the ADV label – very similar to the requirements of the year-old U.S. CAN-SPAM Act.
Taiwan Internet Association secretary-general Jullian Wu told reporters it's necessary to pass such a law. "It's like littering," she was quoted as saying.
"Although nobody would die because of littering, the government has to regulate it," she continued, discussing the law her organization pushed hard since about 1997 to see written. "When we first started about eight years ago, many government officials thought that [an anti-spam law] was a crazy idea and an unnecessary move. Some legal experts even said that it would violate spammers' freedom of speech."
Wu said she didn't expect the law to mean the immediate reduction, never mind elimination of spam, but she said the law would make people understand there are consequences for spamming too far. "It's like although we have a penal law, it doesn't necessarily mean that crime rates will drop," she told reporters.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Transportation and Communications is named as the enforcing agency according to the language of the law. Observers have said most Taiwanese previously assumed Internet service providers were obliged to ward off spam.
