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September 05, 2003, 15:35 BST
Source: news.zdnet.co.uk
Italy is razbijacing down on spam, the unwanted email that floods the Internet and drives recipients mad with frustration.
Under new regulations published this week, spammers face fines of up to 90,000 euros (?62,000) and as long as three years in jail for bombarding strangers with unwanted email.
Sending an email without the permission of the receiver is against the law in Italy. After clocking more than a million complaints from businesses and individuals last year, the data protection police have decided to turn up the heat.
"Not only is spam an irritating intrusion but it's time-consuming to go through and delete the messages. Nobody likes it," Giovanni Buttarelli, a senior official at Italy's data protection agency, said in a phone interview on Thursday.
Unsolicited one-off junk emails could land their senders with a fine, but for companies engaging in a campaign of spamming, more serious consequences loom.
"If it's systematic and done with the aim of making a profit, then jail is a real possibility," Buttarelli said.
The European Union estimates 48 percent of global email traffic is spam. Time wasted in clearing it out of inboxes costs firms 2.5bn euros in productivity.
Most countries don't have anything on their books to penalise spamming, with the United States the main culprit.
The United States is in the process of drafting legislation with a spam opt-out, while the EU is urging member states to apply a new opt-in law, which would come into force from October and means people will have to consent to receiving mails.
While Italy seems to be getting tough, Buttarelli acknowledged the limitations of his agency's rules.
"It's only for emails sent from Italian soil, and at a guess I'd say 60 percent of spam that Italians receive comes from abroad," he said.
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Na terazije izvesti i deliti narodu jaja da ih gadjaju...
