Our spamtraps get hit with a fair amount of unsolicited email from Latin America, particularly from Brazil, Argentina and Peru. By and large, this email is from actual businesses (albeit sometimes small or shady ones) rather than pharmacy spammers or penis pill vendors.

Some of the senders are knowingly abusive, as can be seen by the contortions they go through to try to avoid spam-filtering or identification. The word 'publicidad' ('advertising') which several Latin American spam laws require to be included in the subject line of the message, is often permuted in interesting ways. Others actually comply, to a greater or lesser degree, with whatever laws are in force in their country. And then there are the disclaimers ...

Latin America seems to be the last home of the infamous Murk. A Murk is a disclaimer that references a US Senate bill written by Senator Frank Murkowski, which contained some language that — critics observed — was strongly favorable to spammers. Latin American spammers are particularly fond of referencing this bill, S.1618. Here's a Brazilian example:

Esta mensagem é enviada com a complacência da nova legislação sobre correio eletrônico, Seção 301, Parágrafo (a) (2) (c) Decreto S.1618, Título Terceiro aprovado pelo "105 Congresso Base das Normativas Internacionais sobre o SPAM".

which translates roughly to:

This message is sent in compliance with the new legislation on electronic mail, section 301, Paragraph (a) (2) (c) Decree S.1618 Third Title approved by the "105th Congress [on the] Basis of International Regulations on SPAM".

Here's something similar in Spanish, courtesy of an Argentine spammer:

Bajo el decreto S.1618 Título 3ro. aprobado por el 105º Congreso Base de las Normativas Internacionales sobre SPAM, un e-mail no podrá ser considerado SPAM mientras incluya una forma de ser removido.

which translates to:

Subject to the decree S.1618 Third Title approved by the 105th Congress [on the] Basis of International Regulations on SPAM, an email cannot be considered SPAM so long as it includes a way to be removed.

Both disclaimers are entirely worthless, but what's interesting is the way that the Latin American version of the classic 'Murk' has mutated. A Murk is itself meaningless, because Senate Bill S.1618 was never passed by the Senate, and thus has no legal force whatsoever. But these are still more meaningless, because they refer not to the 105th Congress — the US Congress that considered and rejected the Murkowski bill — but to the "105th Congress on the Basis of International Regulations on SPAM", a body that doesn't exist at all. It's also interesting to note that both the Portuguese and the Spanish versions use the same formulation.

Peruvian spammers, who have the benefit of a permissive spam law similar to the US CAN-SPAM Act, tend to reference the Peruvian law in their disclaimers. In some cases, they reference the law even as they fail to comply with it. In other cases, they comply with their national law (but send unsolicited mail to overseas addresses). In many cases they can't resist throwing in the weasel words about "cannot be considered spam", falsely implying that because they have complied with the requirements of the law, the message isn't spam.

Argentine spammers, on the other hand, fall back on a different law. Here's a typical Argentine disclaimer:

Este es un e-mail directo, legal, libre de virus y que consideramos de su interés, debido a que Ud. se ha contactado alguna vez con nuestra organización, ha sido referido por alguien o nos ha enviado algún tipo de información, tanto Ud. como otros citando su nombre. De acuerdo con la nueva Ley Nº 26.032, cuyo texto se encuentra en: [Link], la libre distribución este e-mail está autorizada por tratarse de propósitos de información ...

which can be translated as:

This is a direct mail, legal, free of viruses and which we consider to be interesting to you, given that you have once contacted our organization, been referred to us, or [there has been] sent to us some kind of information, either [by] you or others citing your name. In accordance with the new Law No. 26032, whose text can be found in [Link] the free distribution of this email is authorized for the purposes of information ...

So what does Law 26032 say? Well, it says:

La búsqueda, recepción y difusión de información e ideas de toda índole, a través del servicio de Internet, se considera comprendido dentro de la garantía constitucional que ampara la libertad de expresión.

which is to say:

The search, reception and transmission of information and ideas of all kinds through the Internet service is considered to be included in the Constitutional guarantee that protects freedom of expression.

Ah hah! It's the old 'spam is free speech' argument. And note also that the spammer implies that this law says much more than it does, by surrounding the reference with all the verbiage about how they came to have your email address (short form: "we bought a CD with your address on it").

Of course what the spammer fails to mention is that in the absence of a specific anti-spam law, the law most often cited in court cases related to spam is the Argentine Personal Data Protection Act, a law which is rather less friendly to spammers. For instance, the law prohibits the use of data "for any purpose or purposes which are different from or incompatible with those giving rise to their collection". You wouldn't need to be a very good lawyer to make the case that scraping an email address from a website and bombarding it with spam is indeed "different and incompatible".

If Argentina ever does decide to make a spam law, I'd suggest that they first take a long hard look at the failings of the Peruvian and US law and try to come up with something that isn't a spammer's charter. I'd also recommend that their law should include exemplary penalties for anyone who claims compliance while failing to comply, or stuffs their messages with deceptive disclaimers referencing irrelevant or non-existent laws.