The European Union Parliament today voted to legalize spam, rejecting a campaign by ISP groups and a handful of members of the European parliament (MEPs) to have junk email banned outright across the Union. In the first reading of a directive on aspects of electronic commerce, MEPs also voted on issues from ISP liability to e-commerce national jurisdiction.
MEPs rejected by 266 to 137 an amendment from the Green Party that would have created an æopt-inÆ system whereby consumers would have to be aware of what purposes their email addresses would be used, for spam to be considered solicited. Now, spam will only have to be labeled as such to be acceptable, and countries will be obliged to run opt-out schemes. Green MEP Otto Wolf said: Parliament has rejected the wishes of a large majority of email users.
MEPs also rejected, on the recommendation of Christine Oddy, the Labour MEP behind the directive, an amendment from the German socialist group which would have banned the harvesting of email addresses from newsgroups and web sites. The amendment would have extended the Data Protection Directive around email addresses, which would mean companies would have to keep records of where the information was found.
Joe McNamee from the European Internet Service Providers Association said ParliamentÆs decision was extremely disappointing but welcomed further rulings that will remove liability from ISPs that unknowingly transmit illegal material. The directive now states that ISPs should not be held liable for illegal transmissions, unless they initiate or modify them. ISPs’ responsibility to combat illegality on the net was also increased, though the rules will stop short of requiring them to keep all information necessary [to trace] providers of illegal content.
On the issue of jurisdiction, the Parliament agreed that for international e-commerce within the EU, the laws of the country of origin are applied. An annex to the directive provides that, on the issue of spam, the country of receptionÆs rules be applied. The Parliament also allowed that individual nation states be allowed to ban spam altogether if they wish.
The directive now goes to the European Commission and the Council of Ministers before returning to Parliament for its second reading. The legislation is likely before the end of the year.
