Tanczos Nandor: Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tanczos Nandor: Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7721. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 One really has to wonder why spammers do it and what they are up to. I look at the stuff coming through my desktop computer and I have to ask myself whether these people really think that I am going to see a title with an inflated promise and actually open that and buy something. It is highly unlikely. Of course we now have spam filters so every day I have to go through this big pile of things that have been filtered out by my spam filter to make sure that something I really need has not been filtered out. Now spammers have invented ways of circumventing spam filters by giving spam new subject names like “Within my wrath of thee” or “Mark 27/2 Bryan Adams”—that is a really enticing title! That is going to get me interested. There is stuff in Cyrillic lettering. Do spammers really think that people will respond to this stuff? Clearly they do. We need legislation like this because people do respond. People actually open this stuff and buy items or send money. 
If we think of the Nigerian scams we wonder who on earth would believe an email from someone in Nigeria claiming to be the great-nephew of some hideous tyrant who looted his or her country of $30 billion worth of emeralds and who has just selected the recipient at random and wants to put $10 million in the recipient’s bank account to help launder it. Well I would not! It seems extraordinary that anyone falls for that stuff but people do. We read in the newspapers that apparently intelligent people think they are going to make money by giving their bank account details to some strangers in Africa who claim to have looted their country. People do that stuff and it means that this House cannot legislate to stop stupidity. We have spam because the economics of it is that only one pick-up in say 100000 is needed for it to be worth carrying on. It just annoys the hell out of the rest of us decreases productivity and uses up huge amounts of resources. I think the Minister said that 80 percent of Internet traffic is spam. That is the economics of the situation I guess. 
So we come to this bill which certainly will not solve the problem on its own. Our ability to solve the spam problem in this Chamber is pretty limited. Nevertheless it is important that we pass this legislation. Three things about it make it worthwhile. The first is simply a point of principle: international solidarity. In order to address spam given the international nature of Internet traffic an international regime that all countries will stand with has to be developed. This bill is our attempt to be part of that. That is important because it is difficult for us to put pressure on other countries to clamp down on that kind of traffic if we are not doing something at home. The other side of that of course is that the bill pre-empts a move by spammers to relocate to this country as other nations start to tidy up if such a thing should ever happen. So the bill is important in that international dimension. 
Secondly there is a small amount of New Zealand - derived spam. The fact that transitional provisions are in the bill indicates that that must be the case so the bill is useful in that regard. 
The third thing that is useful is some of the stuff in clause 25 where there is some useful monitoring and information-gathering functions so that we can start to understand better what is going on. If we are going to come up with the kinds of technical solutions that Mr Sharples and the Minister have endorsed then we have to understand better what is coming through. 
I am not sure that I agree with Dr Sharples’ comments about compliance costs in relation to Internet service providers. Internet service providers will acquire those costs in any case because it just has to be part of their business practice to deal with spam and complaints about spam. I am not sure that the bill will inflate those costs. The other side of that is the cost to us all that comes from non-compliance. So I am not sure about how strong those arguments are. 
The other thing I make reference to is Barbara Stewart’s points about the unsubscribe functions in the bill. One of the difficulties with spam is that we are always told not to hit the “unsubscribe” button because we just encourage spammers by letting them know that someone is on the other end of the email address. It is a kind of weird contradictory thing. But again there has to be some kind of provision. To find a viable alternative is beyond us at this time so that is the way we will have to go. 
All in all the bill is saying that we have to do something about spam. I offer my congratulations to David Cunliffe who has been an energetic Minister in the information technology portfolio with movements around unbundling the local loop the operational separation of Telecom and those kinds of things. This is just one other example of useful movements in the information technology portfolio. 
I will end on what I think is probably the single biggest disadvantage of this bill as it goes through its third reading. It specifically excludes dealing with voice traffic including—it quite specifically says—voice traffic over Internet protocols including Skype and all those kinds of technologies. I have mentioned it before but with the voice spam that was pumped out of the ACT party campaign offices during the last election I say that Parliament may well live to regret that omission.