"TWO DAYS OF GREAT SEX FOR UNDER $5" – Who has never received this kind of email? We all agree that spam is a particularly irritating nuisance and you might have asked yourself: What is the European Union doing about it?

Photo: Martin Maas

Don't we all love SPAM?

It is obvious that all the EU officials who are trying to fight spam have themselves been victims of the so-called "unsolicited mails" as they are called in Brussels-speak. Therefore, we expect our national and transnational legislators to take a harsh stance on spam. However, just as on all other topics, there has been disagreement on the way European legislation should tackle the issue.

Spam mails were prominently placed within the EU framework in a Commission study of February 2001, in which someone had apparently found out exactly how much spam costs us every year:

€10,000,000,000

First question: how on earth were you able to work out the exact cost of a spam email? Did you think in terms of electricity or wasted life time? How is it possible that according to your calculations the cost of spam in Europe was far more than the worldwide revenue from email-marketing at that time?

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Legislation on spam sometimes seems a bit behind.

Maybe there were more doubtful minds like mine or maybe it's just that numbers do not always induce visionary thinking (mathematicians forgive me), but as a matter of fact, today anti-spam measures are still not fully harmonised within the EU; nor is there even a viable strategy to enforce them. Instead, the Brussels worker bees did what they always do: produce enormous amounts of paper. Altogether five fine pieces of legislation could be called spam policies in one way or another.

From the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC to the E-Privacy Directive 02/58/EC, a big part of the hive has to some extent been concerned with unsolicited mails. However, even though spam is now largely banned, there are still no effective penalties like the United States' $11,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient, set down in the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

And so it is that if I switch off my (privately set up) spam-filter, I still receive up to 20 Viagra offers or dinner invitations from nice ladies every day. Although I have a good laugh from time to time, it really is time for the next battle in the war on spam. To put it in numbers instead of years: it has been €80,000,000,000 worldwide since you discovered the cost.

What is the hive doing about this?