Argentina, ranking a strong #7 in global spam, showed no signs of stopping until recently. Legislative and public efforts for spam laws fizzled out in 2002 with no results, but now courts in Argentina are using pre-existing privacy laws to punish spammers.
Argentina is a notoriously frustrating spammer, continuously holding its rank. Many, perhaps most, Argentian ISPs are blacklisted by anti-spam filters.
Argentina has a population of about thirty nine million and an estimated four to five million Internet users.
In 2001, anti-spam legislation was proposed to fight the problems. These efforts were heralded as an effort at educating Argentineans and making global Internet use better. Unfortunately, nothing ever came of these laws, and the spamming only got worse.
In 2003, Argentina really surprised the world. After a lengthy jurisdiction battle between a civil commerce court and a federal court, the federal court heard its first spam case in November 2003. The judge issued an injunction relying on the 2000 Personal Data Protection Act, particularly § 27. The injunction ordered the spammer to stop sending emails after an opt-out was requested, but it also ordered that the spammer cannot give the addresses to a third party under other parts of the Act. This injunction is remarkable because it uses laws drafted for unrelated purposes to curtail the growing spam trends in the name of privacy. It also acts in defiance of the inability of the Argentinean government to actually regulate spam. It seems intuitive that an individual’s right to removal from a database of private information should also apply to e-mail lists, but it takes some judicial gusto to order it without spam legislation. Argentina is still awaiting a final ruling, but it very possible that anti-spam activists have succeeding in stopping spam without help from new legislation. It is also worth noting that the fines or damages for a favorable ruling are unclear, which tailored spam laws might be able to levy more dramatically.
There are still active non-profit organizations in Argentina demanding anti-spam laws; new spam laws are certainly possible. Also, Argentina, or even individual activists, might be able to further curtail spam by bringing charges against other spammers using the new precedent in the future, given a favorable ruling.
Thanks to Pablo Palazzi and Eduardo Mercovich for corrections and insight.
For other countries, see the Spam Laws Worldwide Index.