UK Junk Email Laws Unsuprisingly Rubbish
The reactions to the DTI's anti-spam regulations have been somewhat less than positive. For a start, they don't prohibit mail going to addresses used for business (other than opt-out-per-campaign, which will have little effect). One of the practical objections to this being: how can a spammer differentiate between a business and personal address?
You can't usually tell just by looking at an address if it is used for business, personal use, or both. Or if the usage has changed (a corporate address for an ex-employee forwarding to a personal account). I expect that UK spammers will initially make a "good faith" attempt at distinguishing between them - by just assuming that all addresses are used for business unless they're specifically informed otherwise.
If so, this will probably lead to what anti-spam activists have been trying to avoid - a registry of UK personal e-mail addresses. In other words a TPS-style "opt-out" system through the back door (essentially, a victory for the Direct Marketing agenda).
But why should private users be forced to disclose their private details? Wouldn't it be easier to establish a registry of business email addresses? Companies already have to register a postal address with Companies House. Each company would be forced to have at least one registered email address (businesses that have no access to email could make a declaration as such) and these would be considered "fair game" for unsolicited marketing.
This would get around the privacy/DPA issues of databases of personal email addresses. It also solves the problem of defining what a UK email address is (the physical location of the primary MX or the reader?). It's not an ideal solution - thousands of people will still be sorting the wheat from the chaff - but apparently when it comes to trade regulations, you can't save everyone.
Also I note that the DTI definition of spam appears to have been modified from the normal definition to append a DMA appeasement:
Spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail sent without the consent of the addressee and without any attempt at targeting recipients who are likely to be interested in its contents.
This removes the notion of "bulk" mail and replaces it with something that can be (and probably is) "bulk". So if you receive unsolicited commercial e-mail where some attempt has be made to target you, it isn't spam. Although I think it's still covered by the regulations.
spam: posted at 19:00, link