Effective EU and US approaches to spam? Moves towards a co-ordinated technical and legal response - Part Ⅰ

摘要

Unsolicited commercial email, commonly known as 'spam', has reached pandemic proportions. According to the United Nations, the US generates roughly 58.4% of all spam, China 5.6%, the UK 5.2%, Brazil 4.9%, and Canada 4.1 %. An estimated 15 billion pieces of spam are sent every day, representing at least half of all email. By comparison, spam represented 7% of all email in 2001 and was expected by some commentators to reach between 70% and 80% of all email in 2004. Annually, companies spend an estimated $10 billion in the form of lost productivity and spam-fighting products. Furthermore, there is no wonder that anybody trying to sell a product would still use spam as a marketing tool. The Direct Marketing Association ('DMA') estimated in 2003 that 11 million Americans had made at least one purchase of goods or services in response to unsolicited email advertisements. With low costs, even low response rates will show a profit through spam. According to a survey of March 2003, more than 8% of the 1,118 respondents admitted that they had actually purchased a product promoted via spam. A study in 2002 showed that a return rate as low as 0.001% can be profitable when using email.