The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will submit a bill, possibly next month, proposing legal revisions to regulate unsolicited e-mail advertisements sent to consumers, ministry officials said Thursday.
The bill is aimed at dealing with mounting complaints over these ads, with an increasing number of young people becoming embroiled in financial wrangles with operators of Web sites such as matchmakers and pornographic image providers.
The Democratic Party of Japan submitted a similar bill on the issue to the extraordinary Diet session that closed last month.
METI plans to revise legislation that governs mail-order transactions to ensure that it also covers e-mail messages, the officials said.
Implemented in 1976, the law in question is designed to protect consumers from mail-order businesses by compelling these firms to allow unconditional cancellation of contracts and by regulating their advertising campaigns and other marketing activities.
Under the proposed revision, any company sending commercial e-mail messages would be required to indicate that the messages are advertisements, state its e-mail address, and explain how the recipient can tell the firm to stop sending the ads, they said.
The proposed measure follows guidelines drawn up by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to protect consumers in e-commerce, the officials said. These guidelines were adopted in December 1999.
According to a private advisory panel to the METI consumer division chief, 82.9 percent of more than 2,000 consumers surveyed said unsolicited commercial e-mail messages sent to their mobile phones are very annoying, while 51.1 percent voiced the same opinion of such e-mail messages sent to their personal computers.