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[FYI] There's No Spam Like American Spam



<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8344-2004Feb3?language=pri 
nter>  

washingtonpost.com  

There's No Spam Like American Spam  

By Cynthia L. Webb  

washingtonpost.com Staff Writer  

Tuesday, February 3, 2004; 9:58 AM  

The United States and the European Union are stuck in a growing trade 
war, but this one isn't about beef, bioengineering or bananas -- it's 
about spam. It turns out that it's one of the United States's biggest 
exports and European officials are desperate to ease the glut.  

Yes, U.S. lawmakers are fed up with junk e-mail just like their 
European counterparts. Congress even passed national, anti-spam 
legislation last year. Yes, U.S. consumers get slapped with spam too. 
 

But the fact that most spam originates in the United States (which 
has no outright spam ban) has led the EU (which does) to cry for the 
Americans to "do something about a world increasingly awash in 
unwanted e-mail. Despite Europe's stronger privacy laws, about 53% of 
all electronic mail in the 15-nation European Union is unsolicited 
commercial bulk e-mail, or spam, according to Brightmail Inc., an 
antispam technology company. Even though the EU has 12 official 
languages, 80% of its spam is in English and 80% claims North America 
as its point of origin," The Wall Street Journal reported today. The 
request that the U.S. and other governments do more about spam is a 
central theme of a spam workshop this week by the international 
consortium Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 
Brussels. The European Commission hosted the meeting.  

"According to some sources, unsolicited bulk mail volumes now account 
for as much as one-half of all e-mail traffic on the Internet. Even 
if a given country's domestic e-marketing culture discourages spam, 
or legal restrictions are in place, spam can easily be sent from 
elsewhere. With Internet access available in over 200 countries, spam 
can originate from almost any location across the globe," OECD said 
in a statement yesterday.  

The release is diplomatic, saying only that governments must ramp up 
anti-spam fight, but everyone knows the EU is mostly talking about 
the United States here.  

[...]  


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