SPAMMING LAWS AND INDIA

 "Spamming is truly the scourge of the Information Age. This problem has become so widespread that it has begun to burden our information infrastructure. Entire new networks have to be constructed to deal with it, when resources would be far better spent on educational or commercial needs." - United States Senator Conrad Burns

The term spam was first used in the early 1990s to describe e-mail messages, not related to the topic of discussion and postings that swamped newsgroups .Spam is an acronym for for Simultaneously Posted Advertising Message. Spam is any message or posting, regardless of its content, that is sent to multiple recipients who have not specifically requested the message. Other common terms for spam include unsolicited commercial email (UCE), unsolicited bulk email (UBE) and junk mail. 

Spam is no longer a minor irritant. It has reached the stage where it is perceived to be a serious threat. According to the report India figures among the top 10 spam sending countries, accounting for nearly 3 per cent of spam sent globally in the second quarter of 2008, says The Economic Times, quoting the report.

Is spam harmful?

·         The first objection against spam is the content. The content of spam generally consists of sexually explicit material and harmful embedded codes and material which may prove harmful on downloading,

·         The second issue is that spam is the unwanted wastage of bandwidth, memory space and other resources.

·         The third issue is that Spammers are dishonest in that it has been seen that the spam messages they send out only advertise “stuff that is worthless, deceptive, and partly or entirely fraudulent”. Furthermore, the spam message usually states that the recipients can remove their name on request, however, the likelihood of doing this is not very high, since the spammer frequently places a false return address on the message so that they do not incur any cost of receiving responses.

On legal grounds:

Some advocates argue that spam is a part of freedom of speech as enshrined by Article 19 of the constitution of India. This is the reason why some legislators and advocates argue that the anti-spam legislation has to be very specific in that the proposed legislation has to truly limit itself to only “commercial e-mail”.

Spam against the right to privacy: The menace of spam is against the right to privacy which is one of the extended tenants of the right to life and liberty.

The laws:

Many countries have anti spam laws such as CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) implemented by united states, other countries such as the European Union , Australia and Germany have also enacted anti-spam legislation.

The spam legislation is not present in India till date. The information and technology act, 2000 does not discuss spam at all. Spam is governed by principles of nuisance, laws of pornography or dealt under the consumer protection act depending upon the type and injury caused by spam.

It would be pertinent to site that in the  case of Tata Sons Ltd and its subsidiary Panatone Finwest Ltd filed a suit against McCoy Infosystems Pvt Ltd for transmission of spam. It was held that in the absence of statutory protection to check spam mails on Internet, the traditional tort law principles of trespass to goods as well as law of nuisance would have to be used. The establishment of the Indian arm of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mails (an International Organization against spam) is proving to be useless  to combat the spam menace in the absence of stringent laws and technical advancements, the proliferation of spam seems inevitable.

It can be concluded by quoting David Baker  “No one bill will cure the problem of spam. It will take a combined effort of legislation, litigation, enforcement, customer education, and technology solutions.”