Daum free to charge for spam, agency rules

Daum Communications Corp. yesterday won a victory over an association of Internet commercial businesses. The group had questioned the legality of Daum’s practice of charging bulk e-mailers to send their missives to users of Daum e-mail accounts. The Fair Trade Commission said yesterday that it had ended without taking any action an investigation into Daum’s charge of 10 won per message for e-mail sent in bulk to at least 1,000 of its users. It has not yet issued a formal ruling on the matter, however. On April 2002, an association of 300 online companies filed a complaint with the anti-trust agency, saying that Daum was abusing its position as Korea’s leading portal site to discriminate against businesses that did not run advertisements on its Web site. Daum has charged fees for commercial mail sent to its e-mail users since April 2002. Daum called the step a measure to cut the number of junk mail messages its members receive, but the complainants noted that companies that advertise on the Daum site receive discounts from the mass mailing rate. The online companies have also asked users of their services not to use a Daum e-mail account when they sign up for services available at the other portals; they are trying to avoid having to pay Daum to send e-mail to people who sign up for those services. An official at Interpark, an online shopping mall and a member of the group that filed the complaint about Daum’s practice declined to comment except to say that the firm would wait for the formal ruling from the commission. Although Daum will be allowed to continue charging fees for commercial e-mail, the anti-trust agency also said that it would continue to keep an eye on the practice. The waffling suggested that the anti-trust agency is not sure of its ground in applying Korea’s antitrust laws to the Internet. The commission faces difficulties in applying offline business rules to the rapidly changing business practices on the Internet. For example, it is still examining a complaint by Daum against Microsoft, charging that the software maker has unfairly packaged its Microsoft Messenger service with the Windows XP operating system. That complaint was filed in October 2001. Last August, Daum lost a separate court suit to bar Microsoft from providing that instant messenger service in Korea. Daum said at the time it was considering an appeal, but has taken no action yet. by Kim Young-hoon