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Spam Act 2003

Field	Value
short_title	Spam Act 2003
legislature	Parliament of Australia
image	Coat of Arms of Australia.svg
long_title	An Act about spam, and for related purposes
citation	Spam Act 2003
date_assented	12 December 2003
date_commenced	12 December 2003
bill_history_url	https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r1900
bill	Spam Bill 2003
bill_citation	Spam Bill 2003
bill_date	18 September 2003
introduced_by	Peter McGauran
considered_by	House of Representatives
1st_reading	18 September 2003
2nd_reading	18 September 2003
3rd_reading	9 October 2003
status	In force
considered_by2	Senate
1st_reading2	13 October 2003
2nd_reading2	25 November 2003
3rd_reading2	28 November 2003
related_legislation	Telecommunications Act 1997

The Spam Act 2003 (Cth) is an Act passed by the Australian Parliament in 2003 to regulate commercial e-mail and other types of commercial electronic messages. The Act restricts spam, especially e-mail spam and some types of phone spam, as well as e-mail address harvesting. However, there are broad exemptions.

The first portions of the Act came into effect on 12 December 2003, the day the act received Royal Assent, with the remaining sections of the Act coming into force on 10 April 2004. The Act was originally enforced by the Australian Communications Authority, which in 2005 merged into the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

Outline

The key points of the Act provide that:

Unsolicited commercial electronic messages must not be sent unless it is a designated commercial electronic message defined at Schedule 1 of the Act.
Commercial electronic messages must include information about the individual or organisation who authorised the sending of the message.
Commercial electronic messages must contain a functional unsubscribe facility.
Address‑harvesting software must not be supplied, acquired or used.
An electronic address list produced using address‑harvesting software must not be supplied, acquired or used.
The main remedies for breaches of the Act are civil penalties and injunctions.

Significant cases

Australian Communications Authority v Clarity1 (2006)

In ACA v Clarity1 (2006),Australian Communications and Media Authority v Clarity1 Pty Ltd [2006 FCA 410] (13 April 2006) Justice Robert Nicholson considered the respondent's key defence, being retrospective application of provisions under the Act relating to the acquisition and use of harvested address lists. He noted specifically that lists gathered or acquired prior to the Act coming into force are still subject to the legislation. He also struck out the respondent's defence that it had obtained consent to use the gathered addresses for the defined purpose, and also noted a lack of compliance with the provisions of the Act requiring the provision of a functional unsubscribe facility.

Case Information at the Federal Court of Australia (File WAD155/2005)

References

"Spam Act 2003".
{{Cite Legislation AU. Cth. act. sa200366. Spam Act 2003. 3 (Simplified outline).

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

2003-in-australian-law acts-of-the-parliament-of-australia computing-legislation spamming

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