Spam Statute Status

This afternoon, Stef asked, "does anyone know what the status of legislation, pending, passed or proposed is relating to spam in the uk? did we ever legislate? are there plans? do we not care?"

Seeing as I'm (still) in the midst of preparing a paper on how S&S does email newsletters, I felt well positioned to answer:

"EU directive on privacy and electronic communications (Directive 2002/58/EC [PDF] [html]) was published in OJEC on 31 July 2002 i.e. it's live. Member states must implement the directive by 31 oct 2003. The directive establishes an opt-in regime for direct marketing by email.

As with all Directives, implementation should be achieved by the Member State's government (ie messers Blair et al here in the UK) turning the directive into national law by passing appropriate legislation, but if they fail to do so, the directive comes into direct effect, ie it's law, but we don't have a UK Act to refer to, no UK procedures, authorities etc etc specified. So lots of room for confusion, prevarication and legal fees. Given the deadline, it should have been in the Queen's Speech I think....

As ever, a key weakness with EU directives is that they only apply to the EU, so anyone anywhere else is free to spam us. including our friends in the US.

Register on elexica and search for "Spam" if you want more legal background."

Given the 2003 deadline, I'd expect there to be some UK legislation on it this year. So I sought out the text of the Queen's Speech and looked for any mention of "privacy", "spam", "email" "unsolicited". No joy.

So I faxed my MP to ask why:

"To: Dr Martin Linton
MP for Battersea
House Of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Wednesday 20 November 2002

Dear Dr Martin Linton,

SPAM

As a member of the modern age, I use communications technology on a daily basis both at work and in my day to day life. I am sure that I am not the first person to contact you to ask what the Government is doing about unsolicited marketing communications (aka spam) received by email, and increasingly by SMS to my mobile phone.

I am fully aware of the assistance which is already provided by the Office of the Information Commissioner, and the various Preference Services run under the auspices of the Direct Marketing Association.

However, I am concerned as to the Government's plans as far implementating the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications are. Having read though the text of the Queen's Speech (http://www.labour.org.uk/queensspeechtext/) I can find no mention of the Directive's requirements.

Given that the Directive must be implemented in the UK and other Member States by 31 October 2003, would you tell me how the Government proposes to do so?

Yours Sincerely

Mary"