With only a few days to go before the 31 October deadline for the transposition of the new Directive for Privacy and Electronic Communications, on 13 October the Commission organised a public workshop about spam. More than 200 public and private stake-holders attended, ranging from government representatives to consumer & civil rights groups and from data protection authorities to spokespersons for both internet and mobile telephony companies. Later this year, the Commission will produce a (non-binding) communication based on the results of the workshop.
In his opening speech Erkki Liikanen, the Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society summed up 3 main tasks for member states after the entry into force of the directive; enforcement, consumer self-help and awareness and international co-operation.
Up to date, only Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy and Austria have enacted the opt-in regime, the other member states have yet to follow. When asked about the progress in negotiating a spam-ban with the United States, Liikanen referred to private anti-spam initiatives by US internet service providers. The United States currently don't even have an opt-out regime, and Liikanen remarked that it was very difficult to convince US politicians of the need to take measures, since they consider mail a very important communication channel with their constituency and are afraid of restricting it.
Discussing the need for complaints mechanisms, EDRI pleaded for Commission support for national or even Europe-wide spam-boxes as the easiest way for European citizens to get redress for complaints about spam. The representative from the European Coalition against Unsolicited Commercial Email (Eurocauce) supported the need for cross-border monitoring and enforcement. The Commission said they would gladly intensify collaboration with the Data Protection Authorities after the 31st of October. When asked by the Commission about their experiences with a national spam mailbox, representatives from the French and Belgian DPA answered that both pilot projects had stopped. Both concluded that a national initiative would never suffice, and called on the Commission to help with cross-border enforcement. Though the Commission saw no possibility for further (civil law) harmonisation of fines, the future framework decision on attacks against information systems will create a penal law solution against (fraudulent) spam.
In February 2004 the OECD will host a conference on spam. The Commission hopes this will encourage more countries to switch to an opt-in regime. Given the particularly slow implementation rate of the previous privacy directives, it comes as no surprise that the spam-ban will not be evaluated before 2006.
Commission: results of questionnaire (01.10.2003)
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/ecomm/doc/highlights/c...