On the local (Australian) front (pardon the anchor cliché), the recent tabling of a tough national Spam law has received industry accolade, and looks set to pass when it is read for a second time next month.
Under the proposed legislation, entities engaging in electronic mass-mail practices face penalties of over $1 million a day. The penalties may be clear (and rather hefty, especially when compared to other, more serious, corporate practices), but far more hazy are details surrounding jurisdiction. Presumably, only Australian, for-profit organisations will be subject to the new law, which will render it pretty much useless.
Allow me to explain. Bandwidth in Australia is notoriously expensive, in part as a result of federal telecommunications policy and in part because of geography. As a result, small or home-based businesses are forced to out-source their web hosting to the United States or Japan, where wholesale prices are far cheaper. What this means is that a vast majority of spammers are either going to be sending mail from the US or from places where bandwidth is even cheaper and more unregulated.
Those few businesses which do spam from within Australia are likely to be large enough to be able to afford a robust defence to enforcement proceedings, or appealing the penalty. For these reasons the legislation is unlikely to be effective. We need a worldwide collaboration on unsolicited electronic mail if we’re going to get anywhere.
