UK Court Ruling May Open Floodgates for Spam

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Spam, spam, and more spam. The stuff comes at such a breakneck pace that it makes the head spin. And now that we’re in 2014, you’d think we’d have the nasty blighter dealt with. After all, in some countries where governments have dragged their feet, laws are coming online to deal with spam. In others, there is clearly a push for tougher penalties that will take the fight to the criminals. And other countries are well on their way, providing a fiduciary beatdown on anyone dumb enough to think it’s okay to shotgun blast emails to a bunch of people you don’t know.

So all seems well in the war on spam, unless, of course, you’ve heard about a recent court ruling in the UK.

In fact, things could become a little unsettled, because the UK was one of those countries taking the fight to the spammers, fining with prejudice and taking no quarter.

You see, Tetrus Telecoms had been fined £440,000, a tidy sum to be sure. The offense: blasting out millions of text messages over a three year period. The fine was handed down in November 2012 against Christopher Niebel and Gary McNeish. Niebel received the bulk of the fine, but appealed and won. The Daily Mail reports that “An ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office] probe found their firm was sending huge volumes of text messages from offices in Stockport and Birmingham without phone users’ consent and in breach of the law.”

And at this point, we should all be cheering the UK Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham. And he should be cheered. Tetrus deserved it, from the sounds of it. It’s not Graham’s fault, though, that a judge ruled the company couldn’t be fined all that money. You see, an appeal on the decision went to tribunal which in a bureaucratic fit overturned the ruling, stating, according to the Daily Mail, that the messages were “only a minor nuisance and did not cause ‘substantial damage and distress’.”

Graham pointed out that they could show the nuisance factor, but perhaps the law that protects consumers needs to be revised. “We have just got to lower that hurdle because I think if you ask most people they would say silent calls and unsolicited spam texts are one of the great curses of the age – and if the Information Commissioner can’t protect you it’s a poor lookout.” No argument there, Mr. Graham.

Now, we can all mourn as another big telecom gets away with the digital equivalent of murder, and leave it there. Unfortunately, however, this ruling has implications that, as stated earlier, may throw the spam war, in the UK anyway, into chaos. As the Daily Mail points out, “Experts suggest the ruling makes it hugely difficult, if not impossible for the Information Commissioner’s Office – the watchdog charged with protecting the public against the tidal wave of junk – to issue fines.”

If you’re not feeling a bit unsettled right now, consider that such rulings tend to have a ripple effect in other countries. Certainly the EU could be affected by the ruling, and at very least, the ‘moral’ victory won by the offenders here – Tetrus Telecoms – could act as a springboard for companies elsewhere to not take their fine sitting down.

What’s most frustrating about this is how the offenders – Niebel and McNeish, and Tetrus – profited from their activities. “The company made huge profits of around £8,000 a day from passing on personal details of anyone who responded to messages calling on them to make a legal claim following an accident or if they had been mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance.”

An ICO spokesperson said that “The public is clear that it wants to see a stop put to nuisance text messages. The fines we issue help to achieve that, and if we are prevented from issuing fines then it’s fair to expect that the public will receive more of these messages.”

We’ve come way too far in the fight for freedom from unsolicited crap to let something like this put cracks in our armor, but it’s a difficult one to swallow, to be certain. Ministers in the UK have suggested putting new legislation in place, and Mr. Graham is appealing the ruling (hopefully, the judge will get it right this time). But, as the Daily Mail points out, “until the legal position is clarified there are few deterrents for companies issuing spam messages.”

So, until that’s been clarified in the UK, look for a flurry – nay, a blizzard – of spam.

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