스팸메일규제에 관한 연구

A Study on the Regulation of Spam Mail

Electronic mail has become an extremely important and popular means of communication for personal and commercial purposes. Its low cost and global reach make it extremely convenient and efficient, and offer unique opportunities for the development and growth of frictionless commerce. The convenience and efficiency of electronic mail are threatened by the extremely rapid growth in the volume of unsolicited commercial electronic mail, so-called spam mail. Most of these messages are fraudulent or deceptive in one or more respects. The receipt of unsolicited commercial electronic mail may result in costs to recipients who cannot refuse to accept such mail and who incur costs for the storage of such mail, or for the time spent accessing, reviewing, and discarding such mail, or for both. The receipt of a large number of unwanted messages also decreases the convenience of electronic mail and creates a risk that wanted electronic mail messages, both commercial and noncommercial, will be lost, overlooked, or discarded amidst the larger volume of unwanted messages, thus reducing the reliability and usefulness of electronic mail to the recipient. Some commercial electronic mail contains material that many recipients may consider vulgar or pornographic in nature. The growth in unsolicited commercial electronic mail imposes significant monetary costs on providers of Internet access services, businesses, and educational and nonprofit institutions that carry and receive such mail, as there is a finite volume of mail that such providers, businesses, and institutions can handle without further investment in infrastructure. Therefore a need for the legislation against unsolicited commercial mail has been raised from all sectors. This study has a purpose of suggesting directions for legislation reform of spam mail, inquring into constitutional aspects of regulating spam mail, the legislation trend related to spam mail not only in USA, EU, Japan but also in Korea. The problems associated with the rapid growth and abuse of unsolicited commercial electronic mail cannot be solved by national legislation alone. The development and adoption of technological approaches and the pursuit of cooperative efforts with other countries will be necessary as well.