(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-12 07:21

Many people must start the day with the unwelcome ritual of deleting spam from their PCs and cell phones. To deal more severely with senders of junk mail, a bill to amend the Law on Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail was presented to the Diet last month.

Advertisements constitute the great majority of spam. Under the current law, advertising mail may be sent without the recipient's prior consent if it meets certain conditions, such as the mail contains a message to the effect that it is an "unsolicited advertisement". Spamming becomes unlawful only if the sender keeps sending mail after it has been rejected by the recipient.

But with unscrupulous spammers, the recipient risks becoming inundated with more junk mail by returning unwanted mail. This is a vicious circle that plagues many people.

Also, cracking down on spammers is rendered difficult by the fact that they are not required by law to keep records of mail acceptance and rejection by recipients.

The proposed revision bans the sending of unsolicited advertising mail without prior consent of the recipient. It also requires senders to keep records of accepted mail. Maximum fines for offenders will be raised from the current 1 million yen ($9,824) to 30 million yen.

New rules will be drawn up to determine lawful methods by which advertisers may obtain e-mail addresses of customers and get them to consent to receiving advertising mail. Advertisers should be urged to acquire e-mail addresses by low-key means, such as questionnaires and various forms of prize contests.

Such rules have already been implemented in Europe and Australia. In the Netherlands, stricter regulations and tougher crackdowns are said to have reduced spam to one-seventh of the peak level.

For Japan, the next task is dealing with the "globalized" nature of spamming. More Japanese spammers have gone global lately, meaning that although they are based in Japan, they send their messages to addresses in Japan via remote-controlled computers abroad. A global monitoring and policing system is indispensable.

The revised law will make it easier to distinguish unlawful spam from lawful e-mail. And with any illegal spam sent to Japan from abroad, it will become possible to provide information about its transmission source to the country concerned and ask the latter to prohibit any further transmissions.

For a start, Japanese regulatory authorities should work closely together with their counterparts in other countries to set up an international system of containment.

The Asahi Shimbun

(China Daily 03/12/2008 page10)