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Australia enacted a spam Act in 2003 (www.privacy.gov.au)
Canada has a privacy Act (www.privcom.gc.ca)
New Zealand Privacy Commissioner (www.privacy.org.nz)
Summary of all countries (www.privacyinternational.org and www.spamlaws.com).
While such laws are clearly in consumers’ interests, some companies see the practice as
restrictive. In 2002, ten companies including IBM, Oracle and VeriSign, who referred to
themselves as the ‘Global Privacy Alliance (GPA)’, lobbied the EU saying that it put too
much emphasis on the protection of individuals’ privacy, and not enough on ensuring the
free flow of information between companies! More positively, the Online Privacy Alliance
(www.privacyalliance.org) is a ‘group of more than 30 global corporations and associations
who have come together to introduce and promote business-wide actions that create an
environment of trust and foster the protection of individuals’ privacy online’.

Box 4.3 UK and European e-mail marketing law

As an example of European privacy law which covers use of e-mail, SMS and cookies
for marketing, we review the implications for managers of the UK enactment of
2002/58/EC Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. We will contrast this
with the law in other European countries.
Privacy and This came into force in the UK on 11 December 2003 as the Privacy and
Electronic Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) Act. The law is published at
Communications
Regulations Act www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2003/20032426.htm. Consumer marketers in the UK also need
A law intended to control to heed the Code of Advertising Practice from the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA
the distribution of e-mail CAP code, www.asa.org.uk/the_codes). This has broadly similar aims and places
and other online
communications similar restrictions on marketers to the PECR law.
including cookies. It is a surprisingly accessible and commonsense document – many marketers will
be practising similar principles already. Clauses 22 to 24 are the main clauses relevant
to e-mail communications. We will summarize the main implications of the law by
picking out key phrases. The new PECR law:

1 Applies to consumer marketing using e-mail or SMS text messages. 22(1)
applies to ‘individual subscribers’. ‘Individual subscribers’ means consumers,
although the Information Commissioner has stated that this may be reviewed in
future to include business subscribers as is the case in some other countries such

as Italy and Germany.
Although this sounds like great news for business-to-business (B2B) marketers
and some take the view ‘great, the new law doesn’t apply to us’, it could be
dangerous. There has been adjudication by the Advertising Standards Agency
which found against a B2B organization which had unwittingly e-mailed consumers
from what they believed was an in-house list of B2B customers.
2 Is an ‘opt-in’ regime. The new law applies to ‘unsolicited communications’ (22(1)).
It was introduced with a view to reducing spam, although we all know its impact
will be limited on spammers beyond Europe. The relevant phrase is part of 22(2)
where the recipient must have ‘previously notified the sender that he consents’ or
Opt-in has proactively agreed to receive commercial e-mail. This is opt-in. Opt-in can be
A customer proactively achieved online or offline through asking people whether they want to receive
agrees or consents to
receive further e-mail. Online this is often done through a tick box. In fact, the PECR law does not
communications. mandate a tick box option (except for receiving communications from third parties)
provided consent is clearly indicated, such as by pressing a button.