In the European parliament on Thursday, 266 ignorant scumbag politicians voted to effectively legalise spam. Apparently 137 voted against the legalisation of spam though surprisingly none of the 266 scumbags spoke in favour of it. These people are obviously are completely ignorant to the damage that unsolicited commercial e-mail does to the internet and the aggravation that it causes in general.

The proposed new legislation involves national opt-out lists. So if you have an e-mail address in the Eu and do not want to avail of wonders of spam, you have to put your e-mail on the national opt-out list. It is glaringly obvious that these ignorant politicians haven't a clue as to how these spammers work. Spammers just do not respect opt-out lists and many of them operate from outside of the Eu. Then given the history of the Eu politicians on matters technical, such ignorance unfortunately is to be expected.

A UK MEP, Christine Oddy proposed an amendment that would have users who did not want to be spammed signing up to an opt-out registry. This idea did not work when Spamford Wallace and his ilk were proposing it. It does not work now and it will not work in the future. These politicians seem to have an extraordinarily simple view of things - perhaps that is why they are politicians.

Another UK MEP, this time one with a clue, Graham Watson, argued that the opt-out proposal did not go far enough. He stated that the cost of spam in the UK and Ireland alone amounted to an estimated £5 Billion per year since the costs of downloading are incurred by the users. According to Watson, an opt-in registry would be a more sensible option. Unfortunately, the European parliament seems to be populated mainly by fools. Some 237 of them voted for the opt-out registry amendment.

The vote is apparently only a preliminary one and the legislative path is long. With the European elections coming up, it is possible that the democratic process could be brought to bear on prospective candidates.