With respect to the international context of spam phenomenon a number
of undoubtedly overlapped laws have been established worldwide. The
most important, however, is consider to be the U.S. law of "Controlling
the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act" or
simpler called the CAN-SPAM
Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-187).
The CAN-SPAM
Act of 2003 was introduced in April 2003, with minor changes
from the previous year's version CAN SPAM Act of 2001/2002 (S. 630),
and with other two bills were subsequently merged into it: a) Stop Pornography
and Abusive Marketing Act (S. 1231) and b) Criminal Spam Act of 2003
(S. 1293). The final version was approved in December 2003, and finally
signed into law by the President of U.S. on December 16, 2003. The
law actually took effect on January 1, 2004.
On the other hand, European
Directive for e-Privacy 2002/58/EC is stricter as defines that
commercial e-mails within European Economic area are not allowed
without recipients’ prior consent according to the final amendments.
Regarding Greece, there is also enacted legislation which requires
prior consent of the recipient for automated calling systems playing
a pre-recorded message, fax, and e-mail; though, this legislation implements
the European
Distance Contracts Directive 97/7/EC and rather not the Directive
2002/58/EC. So, the procedure of applying the final European directive
is still pending in Greece.
References: