Big Brother Awards
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New French data protection act not unconstitutional
On 29 July 2004 the French Constitutional Council decided that the proposed new data protection act is not unconstitutional, except for one provision (article 9.3), which has been suppressed from the law. The law is an adoption of the European privacy directive of 1995 (1995/46/EC), and was accepted by the French Senate on 15 July […]
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French privacy authority forbids mail-service
The French data protection authority CNIL has declared the new U.S. mail-service ‘Did they read it?’ illegal. Through this service, launched in May 2004 by Rampell Software, subscribers get a report about the exact time their e-mail was opened, for how long, on what kind of operating system and if the mail was forwarded to […]
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Germans consider prison sentence for spammers
The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine reports about plans from the governing Social-Democrats (SPD) to make spamming an offence in Germany. According to the SPD, merely introducing fines is not enough, and spamming should become an offence, with penalties or a prison sentence. The working group on Telecommunication and Mail of the SPD did not yet […]
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Results OECD workshop on spam
During the OECD workshop on spam, held in Brussels on 2 and 3 February, the consumer unions of Europe and the USA (united in the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue) presented the results of a survey amongst 21.102 consumers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. 96 percent of the people said that either they hated […]
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European Commission communication on spam
The European Commission has finally published a Communication on spam, just in time for the OECD conference on spam, hosted by the Commission on 2 and 3 February. The Communication focusses on actions to be taken by the EU member states in order to make the ban on spam more effective. Clearly, implementing the EU […]
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New anti-spam legislation in NL and Austria
On the 31st of October, the European Directive on Privacy in electronic communications (2002/58/EC) went into force. Only a minority of countries has implemented the directive in time, but any European citizen can now directly appeal to the directive in their national courts. Most recently, the Dutch Lower House accepted the spam-ban on 4 November, […]
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Expert meeting on spam in Brussels
With only a few days to go before the 31 October deadline for the transposition of the new Directive for Privacy and Electronic Communications, on 13 October the Commission organised a public workshop about spam. More than 200 public and private stake-holders attended, ranging from government representatives to consumer & civil rights groups and from […]
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Fines and prison sentence for Italian spammers
Italy is introducing tough fines and prison sentences against spammers. Senders of unsolicited junk e-mails can expect fines up to a maximum of 90.000 euros and 3 years in prison. The penalties go far beyond those in any other European country. All EU member states will have to outlaw spam by 31 October 2003 as […]
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Danish company convicted for spamming
The Danish company Fonndanmark was convicted for spamming last week. The company, specialised in human resource software, has to pay a fine of EUR 2.000 for sending out 156 unsolicited commercial e-mails to 50 different addresses. In Denmark, spamming is forbidden since June 2000, under section 6a(1) of the Danish Marketing Practices Act (Markedsforingsloven). The […]
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Update on anti-spam legislation
In the previous EDRI-gram 6 EU-countries were mentioned that already have a spam-ban, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Greece, Italy and Austria, plus Hungary and Norway in Europe-at-large. We can now add France, Romania and Poland to this list. French E-Commerce Directive (approved 26.02.2003 in the Lower House) http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/ta/ta0089-2.pdf Polish E-commerce Directive (effective 10.03.2003) http://www.giodo.gov.pl/English/ust_podpis_el.htm Romanian E-commerce […]
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EU questionnaire on spam-ban
Per 31 October 2003 spamming will be prohibited in all EU member states, but it is completely unclear what authority should supervise the spam-ban. The European Commission doesn’t have a ready-made answer, and is currently asking privacy-authorities and telecommunications ministries what approach they prefer. The new Privacy Directive prohibits the sending of unsolicited e-mail but […]
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