The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance will be launched in two phases from June 1, Hong Kong's Commerce, Industry & Technology Bureau announced on Monday.
Phase I of the ordinance prohibits the use of unscrupulous techniques to send a large quantity of commercial electronic messages, as well as fraud and other illicit activities related to their multiple sending, and will come into force at the beginning of next month.
Phase II provides an "opt-out" regime, and will be effective by year's-end.
The ordinance covers electronic messages including pre-recorded promotional voice messages, fax, email, SMS and MMS messages.
The messages covered must be for commercial promotion purposes, and must have a Hong Kong link, the Deputy Secretary for Commerce, Industry & Technology Marion Lai and the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) Assistant Director So Tat-foon explained this week.
A Hong Kong link means the message should originate from Hong Kong, or be authorised to be sent by a person in Hong Kong or a Hong Kong company; or the message should be received in Hong Kong or sent to a Hong Kong telephone number.
Person-to-person interactive communications will be exempted. Messages sent in response to the recipient's request, invoices or receipts, non-commercial messages, and sound or video broadcasting services will also be exempted.
In Phase I, the section of the ordinance which prohibits the use of unscrupulous techniques to send out large volumes of messages will be enforced by OFTA. The maximum penalty will be a fine of up to $1 million and five years in prison.
Unscrupulous techniques include using electronic address harvesting software to send commercial electronic messages without the consent of recipients, and generating electronic addresses by automated processes to send a unsolicited electronic message.
The part of the ordinance which prohibits fraud and other illicit activities related to the sending of commercial electronic messages will also become effective during Phase I.
Related activities include accessing a telecommunications device without authorisation to send multiple commercial electronic messages, and falsifying header information in multiple commercial electronic messages.
This section of the legislation will be enforced by the police force, and warrants up to 10 years in jail.
In the second phase of implementation, set to come into force later this year, do-not-call registers will be set up, and the senders of commercial electronic messages must provide accurate sender information, provide unsubscribe facilities, and honour unsubscribe requests within 10 working days.
Senders will also be required to stop sending commercial electronic messages to the addresses registered in do-not-call registers, to not withhold calling line identification information, and to not send electronic mail messages with misleading headings.
Mrs Lai explained that Phase II cannot be implemented until the end of this year because it takes time to set up the registers, codes of practice must be discussed, and businesses need time to update their systems.
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