Anti-spam campaign gathers momentum

Almost 15,000 people have signed a pan-European petition against the legalisation of unsolicited junk e-mail -- or spam -- by the European Union. The campaign -- lead by top German computer magazine c't and supported by The Register (see earlier story) -- has today received further support from the European Internet Service Providers’ Association (EuroISPA). The influential group is also calling on the European Parliament to strengthen anti junk mail provisions in the Draft Directive on Legal Aspects of Electronic Commerce. "Junk mail costs consumers money through their phone bill and time to delete the unwanted mail," said Jean-Christophe Le Toquin from EuroISPA. "It also costs ISPs money in bandwidth and capacity. Commercial e-mailers should not object to being restricted to mailing only those people who have given their consent to receive such mail," he said. The European Commission has proposed the problem can be resolved by "tagging" junk mail so that users can identify junk mail as soon as it arrives. But there are widespread fears that this would give junk mailers carte blanche to send at least one junk mail to everyone before consumers had a chance to set up a filter. EuroISPA is calling for all unsolicited commercial e-mail to be banned. ®