I noticed this over at Will’s: Bill C-460, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Unsolicited Electronic Mail). Sure we all hate spam but this is too much:
- It is too late. Email is lost. Why criminalize activity in a medium which constitutes more than 50% of activity on the medium. You may as well outlaw cross-posting on Usenet.
- Is spamming really a crime? What gets to be crime? Not just bad things.
- The offenses are insane. Up to a quarter million dollars and/or two years for a first offence.
Have a look at a real data related Canadian criminal code provision, s. 181:
Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
This section actually addresses the wrong – “that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest” – and caps the maximum imprisonment at two years. Under C-460 a second offence can get you five years and there is no requirement to do any harm. Maybe I have lived a charmed life but I in my seven years as a web nerd have never seen a “sexually explicit pop-up”. Do they exist? Apparently he is a commando in the fight to combat what he terms commercial “cyber wars” with crime control credentials.
Don’t worry. It is only a private member’s bill so has gone nowhere, it’s natural destiny. It was the efforts of Mel’s local MP, Dan McTeague, who apparently believes the annoying and vulgar should be criminalized. Most of my friends are annoying and vulgar. McTeague appears to be the only Liberal in Canada not to be a cabinet minister under either Chretien or Martin.