Portals band together to can spam

By Timothy Sifert

The country's largest portals and e-mail account providers plan to band together to halt the escalating levels of spam, or junk e-mails, sent via their Internet systems, echoing a growing concern for tighter regulations that's also sweeping through other European countries.

Officials at Onet, Wirtualna Polska and Interia - the country's three largest Internet portals - are talking about drawing up common plans to foster new technology and cooperation that would further curtail companies' and other solicitors' abilities to send mass e-mail messages. Spam, often of no use to recipients, accounts for roughly 20% of Internet companies' traffic and monopolizes their vital and costly bandwidth resources.

The three portals' plans for action come hot on the heels of a new, much debated law that requires companies sending advertising or other promotional e-mail to first obtain the approval of the intended recipients before they send their solicitations. Otherwise, they could be prosecuted.

However, the law only targets domestically domiciled entities that send spam and falls short on providing adequate penalties, people affected by the law say.

Indeed, part of the portals' immediate concern for joining together is that the law and other existing technological solutions are not totally effective.

"We are talking together for the best solution to stop spamming," said Grzegorz Wójcik, vice president of Interia. "The coalition will include at least the three largest portals, but there are some smaller ones that some spammers like to use."

The portals, which are also head-to-head competitors, are cooperating on the issue because junk e-mail has an industry-wide effect. Entities that make money sending spam usually don't target a specific portal or e-mail provider; rather they hit users on any one available. Hence, it's ideal to start some sort of collective action, officials at the portals said.

The domestic portals are unable to provide in-depth information on just how much spam levels have increased in the past few years. But it is estimated that in the United States, which is still fine-tuning its own anti-spam legislation, there were 6.7 million instances of spam in March - a 78% increase from a year ago.

The Polish portal coalition is still in its formative stages, and company officials said it was too early to tell when the first actions would be taken by the group.

That is not to say, however, that the portals will be powerless until they take collective action; the law itself, even for all its criticisms, as well as existing firewall and monitoring software will play a part in disabling spam transmissions.

Artur Waliszewski, portal director at Onet, thinks that the law will help his firm's Internet services to some extent.

"We plan to start to take legal action against spammers," Waliszewski said. "We have some proof - over 1,000 examples of it - that one company in Warsaw is guilty of sending spam."

He noted, however, that the law states that Onet itself can't take the accused company to court. Only spam recipients can lodge cases. As such, Onet would aim to take legal action in some way on behalf of its users.

"We are going to use the law to protect our users," Waliszewski said. "Until now, we have already fought spam on the technological level. The law will help."

In all, Onet plans to continue combatting spam on the legal and technological levels, as well as through the coalition effort.

Waliszewski added that besides simply protecting users, Onet itself has concerns about its own well-being with respect to spam.

"Spamming is very costly," he said. "About 20% of our e-mails are from spam. It could be said that it costs 20% of the price of our Internet (system)." He declined to reveal how much Onet's Internet system costs.

"It was always a problem and it's going to get worse and worse," Waliszewski added, saying that immediately following the introduction of the law on March 10 the number of spam mails sent from Polish addresses declined. But he chalked that up to companies reevaluating their strategies, not to a new unwillingness to the use the Internet as an unwanted marketing tool.

And while Onet praises the law, there are also detractors.

Dominika Mizielińska, legal adviser at Hogan & Hartson's Warsaw office, said that the penalties for sending spam are generally not harsh enough.

"There is criminal action against spammers, which is unfortunately not very severe," she said. "It's just a misconduct (penalty) ... of up to zł. 5,000."

She also said that she does not expect to be working on many claims against companies that send junk e-mail soon, namely because in the current economy victims have other more important complaints to take to court.

What's more, Interia's Wójcik criticized the law for preventing legitimate businesses from using the Internet to market new products.

"It's really tough for regular businesses to correspond," he said. "The law is badly constructed; the government needs to add some improvements."

At present, the law takes the "opt-in" approach, whereby e-mail recipients must agree to receive information of a commercial nature before solicitations are sent. This is opposed to the "opt-out" approach, whereby e-mail users, after receiving the commercial information first, must inform senders that they do not want to receive such e-mail again. The opt-in approach puts the burden on the sender, whereas the opt-out one places the onus on the receiver. Wójcik said he would prefer the law to include a mix of both options.

Nevertheless, whatever the complaints about the law, the three portals believe that forming a coalition will add another valuable weapon in the fight against spam.

"It will help ... doing something together," Onet's Waliszewski said.