European Parliament Fails to Agree on Email Spam

The European Parliament has failed to agree on whether marketers should be allowed to send unsolicited messages to potential customers, leaving the final decision on whether to adopt an opt-out or opt-in policy to the individual member states.

An opt-in policy forces marketers to obtain consent from potential customers before emailing them any advertising material. The direct marketing industry prefers the opt-out approach as it allows for mass emailings, with the onus then on the recipient to indicate that further emails from the marketer would not be welcome.

One thing the European Parliament did agree on was the prohibition of unsolicited commercial messages on SMS mobile phone messaging. This drew a few wry smiles from some people in the industry, though.

Evidently the parliamentarians spend a lot of time travelling between Belgium and France to attend plenary sessions. Like everyone else crossing the border, they receive a welcome text message on their phones, either from the French Telecom, or the Belgian Mobistar.

Says Joe McNamee, regulatory affairs manager at EuroISPA, the European association of Internet service providers: "They opted to ban this type of spam because it is the only type they have any understanding of."

McNamee says that ISPs are opposed to spam (unsolicited email messages) as one of the main reasons for people changing their ISPs is to abandon the trail that they have left for spammers. ISPs also spend a lot of time and money dealing with complaints about spammers.