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That is (or was) the official line on anti-spam legislation here in New Zealand and it came direct from the Minister's own mouth.

Meanwhile, the first law suits leveled under the contentious CANSPAM Act have been initiated in the USA, leaving the world waiting with bated breath to see whether they'll have any effect.

In this story on the NZ Herald website, Adam Gifford suggests something I've already mooted here -- that our lack of anti-spam legislation could make NZ a haven for offshore spammers.

But how realistic is this?

Let's see -- we have a very high (by international standards) level of internet use, which means there are a lot of PCs connected to the Net here.

The average Kiwi net user is just as likely as anyone to open unsolicited email attachments or do other stupid things that expose their computers to nasty trojans, worms and viruses. And, as we all know, many of these bits of evil code are designed to turn the unsuspecting user's PC into a spam relay

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Hell, with the arrival of half-decent DSL pricing plans and a big marketing push by Telecom, we're probably even in the middle of a big (semi)broadband boom right now.

And (of course) there are no laws against spamming here in NZ.

Yep, it would appear that we're the perfect target for spammers who are seeking a safer place from which to spam.

But hang on a minute, things are not as bad as they seem.

For a start, we *do* have laws against hacking and these laws are being tested in the courts right now, so any spammer "owning" a Kiwi's PC could find themselves facing a stiff penalty.

There are also many countries that have a whole lot more DSL connectivity than little old NZ. South Korea is a great example, which is perhaps one of the reason that so much spam appears to originate from that country.

Then there's the fact that our ISPs are generally pretty responsive when it comes to dealing with reported spam sources. I strongly suspect that the time-delay between receiving a report and having a machine/user kicked off the Net would be irritatingly short from a spammer's perspective.

Finally, despite our attitude to things like nuclear-powered/armed vessels and the war with Iraq, we're pretty close to the USA and tend to bend over backwards to meet their demands and appease them at every turn. This means that a US-based spammer would find little in the way of protection here.

So on reflection, I don't think we'll see NZ become spam-central for all the reasons I've just cited, plus another very important one: the CANSPAM Act is a toothless wonder.

Maybe some of the cases scheduled to appear before the US courts will see spammers fined but they'll simply begin complying with the dictates of the CANSPAM Act and we'll be right back where we started.

The problem is that the CANSPAM Act doesn't actually forbid spamming at all. It simply defines some basic rules by which spammers must operate.

These rules are pretty lame really and include:

• a physical address must be provided with each spam
• headers may not be forged
• some indication must be used in the subject-line to indicate that the email is commercial
• an opt-out mechanism must be provided

Firstly, drop-box business suites proliferate across the USA. These are "virtual offices" that allow companies to provide a physical address but which are the equivalent of a serviced office with only a shared receptionist in residence.

Secondly there's no need to forge headers because domain names are cheap so any professional spammer will simply register a new domain each time they spam and use any of a million "friendly" network providers for connectivity.

And despite the fact the Act mandates that spams should contain an identifying tag in the subject line -- they don't define what that tag should be so a spammer can change it for every message if they want and use things like: Advert1zmnt, Sp@m, UC3, or anything that could remotely be considered a spam identifier. Filters will have an impossible task trying to keep up.

Finally, the opt-out mechanism is a waste of time. We already know that you should never respond to a spam, not even to opt-out so who's actually going to use one if it's provided? What's more, if you do opt out, odds are you'll get spammed again because the professional spammers will be changing IDs, companies and domains faster than a hooker changes her stockings so, although you'll have opted out of mailings from Company X, you'll now be receiving spam from Company Y -- which is really just Company X reincarnated.

No, I don't think NZ will become spam-central yet -- but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be working very hard to actually enact (as oppose to simply talk about enacting) some serious anti-spam legislation. If we don't, we risk becoming a laughing stock amongst our peers and a soft *target* for spam, no matter where it originates.

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