New Zealand's anti-spam bill now law

February 28, 2007

Last night the New Zealand Parliament passed the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act, which now makes it illegal to send spam from New Zealand that does not include the sender's details, and an unsubscribe facility, which also applies to normal commercial e-mails and porn e-mails.

New Zealand previously had no defense from spammers sending spam from New Zealand, which accounts for around 10% of all spam internationally.

All members of parliament voted for the bill, except for two ACT MP's with their leader saying that it will place extra costs on small businesses who wish to market their services.

Critics are also damning the act, saying that it will do little to combat the spam, because most of it comes from other countries.

The law also prohibits spam instant messaging and spam text messages.

Spam in New Zealand accounts for 80% of all e-mails in the inbox.

David Cunliffe, minister of information technology, said, "This legislation enables Kiwis to join the global fight against spam. International cooperation to identify, shut down or block the sources of spam is an important part our anti-spam strategy."