March 10, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) --The European Union is continuing its efforts to fight spam, promising Tuesday during an EU telecommunications ministers meeting in Brussels to curb unsolicited bulk emails by speeding up the implementation of a law introduced two years ago.
The law called for the ban of all commercial spam, which European experts say makes up for about half of all European email. Without banning unsolicited email, the law allows Internet users to have their email addresses removed from mailing lists.
The European Union commissioner hinted at the EU's plans to return its focus on eradicating spam earlier this year when he encouraged countries to get tough when enforcing the two-year-old anti-spam law and give more powers to authorities trying to enforce the law. The commissioner encouraged member states to follow the lead of a Danish court that recently fined the Danish company Aircom Erhverv ApS $90,000US for sending 15,000 emails flogging telecom kits.
The commissioner's words lent support to the UK's information commissioner's office (ICO), responsible for enforcing the anti-spam law. The ICO has been struggling because, as the law stands, its enforcement tactics are so weak and court proceedings so long that it could take up to a year for a spammer to be put out of business and found guilty in court. Fines could reach about $9,350US in a magistrate court or unlimited fines in a jury court.
Aside from Denmark and the UK, EU officials say Austria, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden have also adopted anti-spam measures based on the EU directive.
In France, problems with spam have taken a backseat as the country's leading telecommunications company focuses on its acquisition of the minority interests in its hosting subsidiary Wanadoo (wanadoo.fr). The French Stock Exchange gave the France Telecom (francetelecom.com) permission yesterday to acquire Wanadoo's outstanding shares.
France Telecom has been trying to cope with a drop in revenue, and believes that it may generate new revenue growth from Wanadoo's broadband sales. Earlier this month, Wanadoo, which also offers Web hosting solutions, reported financial gains, stating that it consolidated revenues of more than 2.6 billion euros for 2003, up 26 percent over 2002. It also reported a 42 percent revenue growth for Internet access, portals and e-merchant segments.
Struggling with debt, France Telecom has already announced plans to cut 14,500 jobs - seven percent of its global workforce - to help offset its euro49 billion debt. It hasn't been made clear exactly which jobs would be cut. On top of the debt, France Telecom recently announced that its revenue dropped slightly in 2003. It reported annual revenue of 46.1 billion euros, down from 46.6 billion euros in the previous year.
France Telecom blamed the loss on exchange rate fluctuations and divestments.
German hosting giant Strato Corporation (strato.de) is continuing its fight to keep 240,000 domain names from a former partner. Last month Strato was awarded an injunction against the US domain registrar Network Solutions (NSI), preventing it from contacting its customers.
Strato formerly had a resale agreement with NSI and registered all its .com, .net and .org domains there. The contract expired in January and Strato decided to bring the US domains to its own subsidiary, Cronon, but NSI refused. NSI sent German domain owners a letter (in English) asking them to renew their registration with them for $35 or more.
Strato has further requested the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intervene and the German Federal Department of Trade and Industry has been contacted to represent the German clients.
