España (ES)

Spain

The Spanish Association of Internet Users (AUI) has launched a campaign against UCE under the title Rompe las cadenas: Lucha contra el correo basura which includes education and working with companies to promote ethical practices relating to commercial email. The website includes a lot of very good material on the issues ranging from a thoroughgoing description of the problem and the range of measures both legislative and technical for dealing with it.
 

A second draft of the Law on the Information Society and Electronic Commerce designed to implement the E.Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) was issued in October 2000. A later version was made public in January of 2001. "Service providers" sending UCE must consult at least once a month either an external 'opt-out' list or one they maintain themselves. They may consult additional lists, and they must include the string "publicidad" or "publi" at the beginning of the Subject: line.

This predictably unleashed a storm of protest (see below), and the final draft of 30 April 2001 includes provisions effectively banning Unsolicited Commercial Email and promoting 'opt-in' for email advertising. This version was adopted and entered into force on 2002-10-12.

Article 21: Prohibitive rule of commercial communications sent by e-mail or other equivalent electronic means of communication

1. The distribution of promotional or advertising communications by electronic mail or equivalent electronic means, is forbidden if they have not been solicited before or if they have not been explicitly authorised by the recipient.
    
2. Commercial communications sent by e-mail or by equivalent means of electronic communication, in accordance with set terms, have to start with the word "publicidad" ("publicity").

Article 22: Legal rights of recipients of commercial e-communications

1. In case the user of an internet service has to give his e-mail address during the contracting or subscription process with the service provider and the provider has the intention to use this address afterwards for the purpose of sending commercial communications to the customer, he has to inform the customer of this intention. Also he has to ask for the customer’s approval to do so before finally concluding the contract procedures.
    
2. The recipient has at any time the right to withdraw his given consent to receive commercial communications by simply notifying the sender of his wish to do so.
    
   For this purpose the service provider has to set up easy operating procedures free of charge to enable the recipient to revoke his once given permission. Thus the service provider has to make information available regarding those procedures and they must be accessible by electronic means.

[Commentary on Draft of 18 January 2001]
In this draft Law the Minister for Science and Technology, Anna Birulés, "says 'yes' to spam" according to an article appearing in El Mundo. The author of the article, Gonzalo Álvarez Marañón, Doctor in Telecommunications Engineering and editor of Criptonomicon can well imagine the headlines which would appear should the law be passed in its ordinal form, "Spain, the first country in the world where junk email gets naturalisation papers." The Minister seems to be convinced that the use of the Internet and the development of the Information Society can best be promoted by forcing net users to spend a lot of time downloading ever-increasing amounts of UCE they never asked for and do not want.

In an earlier article, Saremedia's security expert Borja Marcos figures that if Articles 22 and 23 of the preliminary draft are enacted in their original form, "The users of this country will be able to enjoy like those of no other the benefits of what is euphemistically referred to as 'direct marketing'. That is, their electronic mailboxes will be stuffed full of advertising the same way as their traditional ones are." Attention is called to the naïveté of the Minister for Science and Technology who thinks that the draft law would promote Internet usage. Nothing could be further from the reality where thousands avoid participating in discussion fora for fear of receiving an unwanted 'service'. The preliminary draft may be laudable and well-intentioned, but it contains a dangerous poison.

According to the text of the draft, users not wishing to receive advertisements can register on "one or more" 'opt-out' lists. It will be impossible for the user to protect his or her mailbox when there are innumerable such lists. "To maintain that this preserves the rights of the users is an atrocity."

The labeling requirement would enable 'user filters'. Since these are often brought into play only after the equivalent of a 32-page pamphlet (complete with images), has been downloaded (with all that implies in terms of time on metered connections, messages lost because the mailbox is full, etc.), the issue of damage to users is not adequately addressed.
 

In an article on internetnews.com, the president of the Association of Internet Users (AUI), Miguel Perez Subias, stated that AUI intended to campaign for UBE to be treated the same as the massive distribution of commercial faxes. There has already been a meeting between representatives of AUI and the Data Protection Agency. AUI further intends to draft a proposal for debate in Parliament.
 

Concerning Spanish legislation, there's not much. Only the LORTAD (Ley organica de regulación del tratamiento automatico de información, law about automated information processing), and the Agencia de Protección de Datos deal with it. That law states that every consumer has the right to modify or erase information from public databases, and that data gathered on a consumer for a certain purpose can't be used for another. AFAIK, this is older that the directive. This same agency has issued certain advices for keeping the privacy of internet users, including recommendations on spam; this document can be obtained from that web address, title "Recomendaciones a usuarios de Internet), date July 1997

The academic network, RedIRIS, houses the main resources on the topic. It also deals with spam problems coming from the academic network.

(JJ Merelo 1999-02-13)