Sinking or swimming on spam
The federal government this week lauded the Spam Act 2003 as a "leading legislative model" in fighting unsolicited bulk electronic messaging and claimed "many professional spammers that had been based in Australia have either shut up shop or left the country".
However, Australian legislation can at best have only a minimal impact on spam being sent to Australians. The vast majority of such messages come from overseas.
A discussion paper released to prompt public input into a government review of the Act notes that spam is continuing to increase as a percentage of global e-mail, despite improvements to filtering systems.
