China has introduced regulations that make it illegal to run an email server without a licence. The new rules, which came into force two weeks ago, mean that most companies running their own email servers in China are now breaking the law.

More than 600,000 servers were sold in China last year, according to market researchers. It's unclear how many of these are running mail server software, which includes programs like Microsoft Exchange Server, Sendmail, Qmail or Lotus Notes.

The new email licensing clause is just a small part of a new anti-spam law formulated by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). The chilling effect on corporate email servers, which are commonly used by companies with more than a handful of employees, appears to have gone unnoticed until now.

However, Singapore-based technology consultant, James Seng, who first drew attention to the new email licence requirement, believes the inclusion of the prohibition on mail servers is no accident.

“Looking at the Chinese text, it is clear they have worded it carefully”, he told vnnet, “They know exactly what they are doing and what they want. So this isn't a case of clueless civil servants screwing up or just bad translation.”

Seng, a former assistant director of Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority, is a co-holder of several internet-related patents and the founder and former CTO of multilingual domain names company, i-DNS.

China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', and also reiterate that emails which contain content contrary to existing laws must not be copied or forwarded. Wide-ranging laws of this nature have been used against political and religous dissenters in the past.

“I believe that the intent to have an antispam regulation was a good one,” Seng says, “Unfortunately, it seems like during the policy formulation process, it got hijacked and went to one extreme."

China has been troubled by a growing junk email problem during the past few years. Spam cost the country at least $760m in lost productivity last year, according to estimates from the Internet Society of China (ISC). China is also a major source of global junk mail, with one fifth of all the spam received worldwide being sent from or relayed through computers in China.

According to the ISC's translation of the MII's new anti-spam regulations, organisations or individuals acting as so-called 'Email Services Providers' (ESPs) now need a 'License for value-added telecommunication services'. There appears to be an exemption for registered non-profit organizations.

In the past, telecommunications-related licences have been difficult to obtain in China, particularly for foreign-controlled companies, because of the government's security concerns.

“It is probably like all new licences,” Seng believes, “it will take a while before anyone knows what's the procedure. I suspect people are likely to ignore it for now - until the government enforces it.”

Under the new regulations, Email Service Providers must register their mail servers' internet protocol (IP) addresses with authorities 20 days before they start operating the server. The must also keep a record of all emails sent and received for 60 days. The rules even prohibit open relays: mail servers which accept and relay email from any source without verification

The regulations also ban many of the techniques commonly used by spammers, such as hijacking servers to use as 'zombie' spam relays. In addition, advertisers sending unsolicited commercial mail also need to prefix the subject line with 'Advertisement' or 'AD', and comply with recipients' requests to cease sending them unwanted email.