Italy is introducing tough fines and prison sentences against spammers. Senders of unsolicited junk e-mails can expect fines up to a maximum of 90.000 euros and 3 years in prison.

The penalties go far beyond those in any other European country. All EU member states will have to outlaw spam by 31 October 2003 as a result of European directive 2002/58/EC. From that date on the sending of unsolicited bulk email is only allowed after prior consent of the receiver. The European directive does not specify penalties.

The Italian data protection authority said that the high penalties apply to senders that operate with the aim of making a profit.

The Danish company Fonndanmark was convicted for spamming last week. The company, specialised in human resource software, has to pay a fine of EUR 2.000 for sending out 156 unsolicited commercial e-mails to 50 different addresses. In Denmark, spamming is forbidden since June 2000, under section 6a(1) of the Danish Marketing Practices Act (Markedsforingsloven). The act creates a very broad privacy-protection, for both natural and legal persons and authorities. The company was sued by the Consumer Council, the supervisory authority of the anti-spam legislation.

Implementing Art. 13 of the new EU Privacy Directive will mean a deterioration of Denmark's privacy-protection.

In the previous EDRI-gram 6 EU-countries were mentioned that already have a spam-ban, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Greece, Italy and Austria, plus Hungary and Norway in Europe-at-large. We can now add France, Romania and Poland to this list.

French E-Commerce Directive (approved 26.02.2003 in the Lower House)
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/ta/ta0089-2.pdf

Polish E-commerce Directive (effective 10.03.2003)
http://www.giodo.gov.pl/English/ust_podpis_el.htm

Romanian E-commerce Directive (effective 05.10.2002)
http://www.legi-internet.ro/en/e-commerce.htm

Since 22 January Romanians can report spam via 2 special email addresses provided by the Ministry of ICT. In Romania the Ombudsman functions as data protection authority. Either he or the Ministry can fine spammers between 10.000.000 and 500.000.000 million lei (approx 280 and 14.000 euro).

Per 31 October 2003 spamming will be prohibited in all EU member states, but it is completely unclear what authority should supervise the spam-ban. The European Commission doesn't have a ready-made answer, and is currently asking privacy-authorities and telecommunications ministries what approach they prefer.

The new Privacy Directive prohibits the sending of unsolicited e-mail but doesn't regulate the practicalities of penalties, damage claims or prosecution of cross-border violations. To make matters even more complicated, the Directive leaves the level of privacy protection of legal persons up to member states. Therefore, in some countries all e-mail addresses will be protected, in other states the spam-ban is limited to natural persons. On top of that, the directive bans commercial spam, but does allow for a ban on all unsolicited electronic communications, including those for charity and political purposes.