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Spam Laws Worldwide: Australia - Update
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Sunday, April 11 @ 20:02:27 EDT Spam
Time for Australia to show if it meant what it legislated. Australia's strict spam laws went into effect this weekend.

Australia's new spam policy, previously noted here, went into effect this weekend. The honestly titled Spam Act has a strict opt-in regime.

Since the Act passed last December, there has been speculation about what will happen. Some say that regulators and businesses do not understand the Spam Act and most businesses could be in violation. Others criticize the loopholes, suggesting pharmaceutical companies might be able to "sponsor" public service messages about drugs (though Spam Act might not look so kindly on this loophole). It is unclear who has changed what policies; nobody knows what will happen in the upcoming weeks.

There is no private right of action in the new Spam Act. All enforcement is from the Australian Communications Authority, which now has an online complaint form, complete with a downright good consumer guide to what should be reported. The ACA has suggested it is after a few spammers and plans to start sending warnings soon. The timeframe and scale of these efforts will be revealed soon enough.

This moment in spam law is interesting because Australia has the potential to place itself anywhere in the spectrum of legal spam remedies, including either extreme, all from one law. An overworked or underfunded ACA could accomplish nothing at all. A savvy ACA could charge the so-called spam kingpins and dramatically decrease spam volume while ignoring borderline spam. An overzealous ACA could severely limit e-mail communications, even prosecuting private e-mails with commercial content, like the standard example of a professor sending out an e-mail about her new book (although the Spam Act exempts her e-mails to former and current students). The impact and potential chilling effects of the Spam Act will not be found in its text; they will be created by the actions of a government agency in the upcoming months.

For other countries, see the Spam Laws Worldwide Index.

 
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· More about Spam
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Re: Australia - Update (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, April 11 @ 22:17:13 EDT
Let me preface this by saying that I don't know much about Australia, let alone its government and politics. But is the ultimate effect of the Spam Act really in the hands of the ACA? Or is it, as is often the case in the United States, in the hands of a higher power -- the executive administration who maybe controls the ACA? Unless the ACA is fairly autonomous, then it's not fair to say that the ultimate effect will be created by the ACA.


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Wayne Mansfield (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, April 12 @ 02:37:54 EDT
Australia has a small handful of hard-core problem spammers, of which Wayne Mansfield is the one that's given me the most aggravation. If Wayne fricken Mansfield of Western Australia ever spams me again, I will take great pleasure in reporting his arse to the ACA, and I will judge the effectiveness of this law principally by (a) whether the deterrent factor is sufficient that Wayne stops spamming me voluntarily, and (b) in the event that he spams, how hard they come down on him. This is an entirely self-centred view of things, I know, but given Mansfield's spamming antics, it's probably not an uncommon sentiment. (Heck, I even received spam from him during the "grace period".) Here's a Google search for Wayne Mansfield [www.google.com] if you want further information on this irritating Australian spambag.


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