The Club Med or Club Fed Approach to Regulating SPAM: Hong Kong's Dilemma

Mondaq Business BriefingHong Kong Law Articles in English (2004)

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The Club Med or Club Fed Approach to Regulating SPAM: Hong Kong's Dilemma

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting.

Bill Gates, Microsoft

The Internet may have given us an unprecedented tool for locating and sharing information but it has also provided an unwelcome accomplice - unsolicited electronic commercial messages on a large scale, otherwise known as spam.

The Internet has provided us with a widely used communication tool in e-mail. Not all of us may surf the Net but many of us use e-mail to communicate. E-mail is nowadays an integral part of business communication. The more we have come to rely on its convenience and cost savings (with multiple e-mail accounts per person and more and more people around the world opening new domain accounts) - the more likely it was that we would open the doors to abuse of the technology. Some would say therefore that spam was, perhaps, inevitable.

The debate centres on the following question: in a borderless environment how can individual countries protect the privacy rights of their citizens whilst still allowing legitimate e-marketing to occur?

Despite the difficulties, a number of countries have taken steps to tackle the problem. Solutions range from the 'Club Med' styled approach of self-regulation to a more militant line that involves the quartet of public education, enhanced powers of ISPs, technological measures, and legisl...

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