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The Government has launched a four-month consultation to solicit public's views on measures to combat spam, the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr John Tsang, announced today (June 25).

Speaking at an anti-spam forum today, Mr Tsang said the consultation would look into unsolicited electronic messages, or junk messages, in general, including e-mails, faxes, short messaging services (SMS) and multi-media messaging services (MMS).

He said that possible measures to combat spam could be consider in the following five areas:

* Self-regulation by the telecommunications industry;

* To devise technical solutions;

* To promote international co-operation;

* To promote user awareness; and

* To legislate against spam.

"At this stage, we have an open mind on which measures, or indeed on which combination of measures, are best suited to combat spam. Two yardsticks would be helpful in our evaluation," Mr Tsang said.

"First, any proposed measures should not place an undue burden on the business community. In particular, they should not deter businesses from reaping the benefits of low telecommunications costs in their legitimate marketing or customer transactions."

"Second, of course, any proposed measures have to work. Since any measure comes with a cost, it should be used only if it is indispensable and effective in addressing the problem."

Regarding the introduction of legislation, Mr Tsang said it certainly had the deterrent effect it could bring. However, the taxpayers would have to shoulder the administration and enforcement costs.

"For businesses, legislation would impose compliance burdens and hence additional costs on marketing activities. This would particularly affect small and medium-sized enterprises."

"Other sectors of society would be concerned about how the new powers given to enforcement agencies under anti-spam legislation could impact on the privacy of personal communications. There would also be doubts about effective enforcement of the legislation. Among the problems that would need to be addressed are the difficulty of tracing the spammers, the extra-territorial nature of spam, and the resources needed to enforce the legislation," he said.

Noting that the issue of junk messages was a complex one and had wide implications on telecommunications users, telecommunications operators, telecommunications service providers, direct marketing and tele-marketing companies, and general businesses, Mr Tsang hoped the consultation would encourage the community to discuss the issue in great depth and expressed their views on this important subject.

Ends/Friday, June 25, 2004

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