On the 31st of October, the European Directive on Privacy in electronic communications (2002/58/EC) went into force. Only a minority of countries has implemented the directive in time, but any European citizen can now directly appeal to the directive in their national courts.
Most recently, the Dutch Lower House accepted the spam-ban on 4 November, voting unanimously for the new Telecommunication Law. Attempts from a social-democrat member of parliament to introduce penal sanctions for spamming and to extend the spam-ban to recipients on the workfloor failed, in spite of much anti-spam rhetoric from the governing liberal and christian-democrat parties. The House did accept an amendment that requires proof of consent from the senders of unsolicited communication, making it more difficult for the direct marketing industry to rent-out address-lists and play 'tell-a-friend' tricks.
In Austria the Directive was implemented in time. The anti-spam regulation went into force in August. Like the Dutch, the Austrian government refused to extend the spam-ban to all natural persons, including e-mail addresses used at work. Unlike the Dutch though, Austria already had opt-in protection for all recipients under the old telecommunication law. Anti-spam legislation already deteriorated when the E-Commerce directive was implemented, forcing the Austrians to suddenly create an opt-out list. Since the implementation of the new Privacy directive some enforcement agencies state that even that opt-out list no longer applies to non-consumers since the new telecom law explicitly _allows_ them to be spammed, as long as an opt-out-possibility is mentioned in the spam-message.
According to the Directive (Article 13) all natural persons have to be protected via opt-in, leaving it up to member states to extend the protection to business addresses. In reality, it is very difficult to distinguish between different addresses. On top of that, many free-lancers and -in some countries- small businesses are not legal persons and should be protected via opt-in according to the Directive.
European Commission: New privacy rules for digital networks and services
(31.10.2003)
http://www.europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=g...
New anti-spam regulation in Austria (in English)
http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/countries/c_at.html
(Thanks to Albert Koellner, Vibe!AT)