CAUCE

FTC sort of says that CAN SPAM sort of works

The CAN SPAM act required that the Federal Trade Commission report back after a year, which they did, releasing the report almost as an afterthought with a press release about some international anti-spam enforcement at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/12/buttonpushers.htm.

The goals of the CAN SPAM act were to make life better for large bulk mailers, and to make it somewhat easier to go after the crooks. (Note that stopping UBE or UCE isn't in that list.) It did both of those reasonably well, as the FTC documents. They then go on to say that one thing it didn't do was to give them the authority to work closely with other governments to deal with spammers active in multiple countries, and they suggest some legislation to do so.

We think it's fine to give the FTC better international enforcement powers, but it's no substitute for an actual anti-spam law. One of the CAUCE board members has further thoughts in his blog at http://weblog.johnlevine.com/Email/ftcreport.html.

News from Australia

Australia has an excellent anti-spam law, the Spam Act 2003.

The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan has called for public submissions as part of a review of the Spam Act 2003, to be completed by April 2006. "The Australian Spam Act is internationally recognized as a leading legislative model to crack down on the scourge of spam that is overloading people's in-boxes and causing great frustration," Senator Coonan said. "Since the Act came into effect, many professional spammers that had been based in Australia have either shut up shop or left the country."

Australia's Spam Act applies to commercial electronic messages which include spam sent via email, SMS, Instant Messaging and Multimedia Messaging Service.

For more info, see http://www.dcita.gov.au/ie/spam_home/spam_act_review.

CAUCE Joins the London Action Plan and the Anti-Spyware Coalition

CAUCE Canada, CAUCE U.S., and Asia-Pacific CAUCE (APCAUCE) have joined the London Action Plan (LAP). The LAP is a project started by government consumer protection agencies like the US Federal Trade Commission, the UK Office of Fair Trading, and the our governmental contingent includes both Industry Canada and the Competition Bureau. Many European and Asian governments participate as well. CAUCE looks forward to working with the various governments to help enforce the anti-spam laws that exist, to better understand how the laws do and don't work, and to learn how better laws might be written. CAUCE Chair Neil Schwartzman attended the meetings in London in October, 2005.

We've also joined the Anti-Spyware Coalition, a group of makers of anti-spyware software and public interest groups. The ASC is hoping to build consensus about definitions and best practices in the area of spyware and other unwanted technologies. The group is made up of representatives from the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, AOL, Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec and many others. While spyware isn't CAUCE's direct area of concern, the legal remedies overlap with those against spam, and the bits of the government that address spyware are the same ones that address spam. The ASC has had several private meetings to work on policy; Neil Schwartzman and John Levine attended the meetings held in Chicago and Berkeley, California in recent months. The ASC will be holding public events on February 9, 2006 in Washington D.C. and on May 16, 2006 in Ottawa.

Federal Task Force on Spam Final Report Submitted to Government

In May 2005, the Federal Task Force on Spam submitted a comprehensive report to Minister of Industry David Emerson.

CAUCE Canada Board members participated on many of the working groups that developed the various sections of the report, and CAUCE Chair Neil Schwartzman sat on the Task Force itself. Board participation was as follows: Consumer Awareness and Education - Genevieve Reed (also a Task Force member) Technology & Network Management - Chris Lewis, John Levine, der Mouse Law and enforcement - Chris Lewis, John Levine Email Authentication - Lynda Partner, Sylvain Carle Also, Board member Bernard Brun attended the Task Force's public Spam Roundtable held in Ottawa in December 2004. The work paid huge dividends.

CAUCE Canada readily signed off on the report and its constituent parts, including

• Recommended Best Practices for Internet Service Providers and Other Network Operators
• Recommended Best Practices for Email Marketing
• Three Key Tips for Combatting Spam

As Task Force member Michael Geist noted: "The report called on the government to introduce tough anti-spam legislation backed by significant new financial penalties."

Minister Emerson welcomed the report; both the politicians and Industry Canada worked very hard to develop the recommended laws until the government fell in November. We hope the work will be renewed with equal vigor after the coming Federal elections. Geist went on to predict "With spam and spyware an ongoing problem, the new government will introduce anti-spam legislation in the spring. Look for potential repeat of the do-not-call embarrassment as lobbyists move in quickly to water down the tough measures found in the bill."

A link to the report can be found on the Task Force public education sites at http://StopSpamHere.ca and http://Arretezlepourrielici.ca/