Danish company convicted, fined for spending e-mail spam
(APW_ENG_20030501.0306)
1) A Danish company was convicted and fined Thursday for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, known as spam, the first such case in the Scandinavian country of 5.3 million.
2) The Maritime and Commercial Court in Copenhagen fined Fonn Danmark 15,000 kroner (US$2,206) for sending 156 unsolicited commercial e-mails during 2002.
3) The small software company was convicted of violating Denmark's law prohibiting the sending of unsolicited advertising e-mail and faxes. The law was enacted in July 2000.
4) The ruling can be appealed, but no one at Fonn Danmark was immediately available for comment.
5) ``We would have like to see a bigger fine, but considering that we are talking about a very small company and the fact that it has only been found guilty of sending 156 advertisements, the fine isn't that bad,'' Denmark's consumer ombudsman, Hagen Joergensen, said.
6) Denmark's government-run Consumer Agency sued the company after it received 50 complaints.
7) Nearly 70 percent of Danes have computers in their homes.
8) (jo-mpm)
Australian business fined over spam e-mails
(APW_ENG_20061027.0348)
1) The first company to be convicted under Australia's tough anti-spamming laws was fined Friday 5.5 million Australian dollars for sending 280 million advertising e-mails.
2) The Federal Court fined Clarity1 Pty Ltd, based in the west coast city of Perth, A$4.5 million (US$3.4 million; euro2.7 million) and its director Wayne Mansfield A$1 million (US$760,000; euro600,000) for sending unsolicited e-mails advertising seminars and other products.
3) The business had sent 280 million spam e-mails of which about 74 million were successfully delivered over two years. The court also banned Clarity1 from sending unsolicited e-mails in the future.
4) Australia has some of the toughest laws in the world against spamming, the notoriously hard-to-stop practice of flooding as many e-mail inboxes as possible with unwanted advertising messages.
5) Under Australia's Spam Act of 2003, it is illegal for Australian residents to be involved in the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mails, even if they are generated from outside the country.