U.K. fights spam with law and a trip to Washington

LONDON — As part of an assault on unsolicited commercial e-mail, better known as spam, a delegation of Members of Parliament (MPs) will go to Washington, D.C., next month in an effort to persuade U.S. lawmakers to take a tough “opt-in” approach to spam.

The U.K. e-Envoy Andrew Pinder will join members of the All-Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG), including Derek Wyatt MP, Brian White MP and Andrew Miller MP, for meetings Oct. 13-16 on Capitol Hill with Senators and other lawmakers, the group said in a statement Monday.

European regulators have moved to adopt what is commonly known as opt-in anti-spam rules that prohibit e-mail marketers from sending promotions to individuals without their prior consent. Lawmakers in the U.S. have expressed a preference for the “opt-out” method where the onus is put on individual users to let companies know that they do not wish to receive spam. But last month, U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Timothy J. Muris warned that pending anti-spam legislation would be unlikely to stem the flow of unwanted email. 

The announcement of the MP’s trip to Washington, D.C., comes hard on the heels of the U.K.’s latest effort to stop, or at least slow down, the tide of spam. On Thursday, the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry outlined a new directive scheduled to take effect on Dec. 11. Under the new directive, which updates the current Telecoms Data Protection Directive, companies and individuals can be fined up to £5,000 ($8,200) for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail and SMS (short messaging service) text messages to mobile phones without prior agreement.

But the anti-spam law has already been heavily criticized by anti-spam groups like the Spamhaus Project, claiming the law doesn’t go far enough to protect businesses as well as individual e-mail users.

There is also the additional problem of tracking down and imposing fines on those sending spam from outside of the U.K., an endeavor made that much more difficult if the U.S. protects those same people with opt-out anti-spam laws.

“As 90 percent of all spamming e-mails originate in the U.S.A., we must try and persuade our political colleagues in Washington that their current opt-out system might just ensure that the Internet becomes blocked forever which will push up costs and act as a major disincentive to use,” Wyatt said in a statement announcing the APIG trip to Washington, D.C.

But if similar meetings held last July between U.S. legislators and European Parliament members are anything to go by, Wyatt and his colleagues may face polite but strong resistance to the notion of opt-in.

Erika Mann, a German member of the European Parliament and chairwoman of the European Internet Foundation, said after the July meetings that she believed the U.S. and E.U. would strike an agreement to prosecute spammers across international borders, but any solid agreements have yet to materialize.