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.
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