News about Italian spam:
Senders of unsolicited junk e-mails in Italy will now face jail sentences of up to three years, according to Italian media reports.
The country’s privacy watchdog issued the ruling in an attempt to limit the huge amount of advertising and promotional material sent online.
Sending e-mails without the permission of the receiver is against the law in Italy.
Offenders now risk fines of up to 90,000 euros and between six months and three years in prison, if it is proved that they did it to make a profit.
The ruling follows estimates by the European Commission that spam e-mails cost EU companies approximately 2.25bn euros in lost productivity last year.
EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.
Most spam comes from the United States and China, and will be outside its reach.
If that’s so, you wonder what the real point of this is. Expect calls for world government to deal with this. Sorry: “global governance”.
I despise the spammers. I get at least 100 spams a day. Most are caught by my filters but enough get through to be annoying.
Then again…
Under Big Blunkett’s snoopers’ charter (RIP Act) ISPs must keep records of all email. So if “they” ever demand my records they’ll be swamped with lists of spam to wade through. I love the idea of spooks wasting their time trying to decide if “generic viagra” is a potential terrorist weapon. (Well, it could blow things up… sorry)
Perhaps spam actually serves a purpose in terms of disinformation?
Keep on jamming.