Yes, spam is an international problem. I believe that part of what this bill intends to do is put in place the enforcement capacities and potential for international cooperation that will allow countries to collaborate and go after spammers in a variety of locations. The bill makes it illegal to send an unauthorized, without consent, commercial e-mail message to someone in Canada. That would equally apply to an organization that may be engaged in spam outside of Canada, but obviously, for enforcement purposes, our authorities will need to collaborate. And that's an issue that we find in a lot of areas.
What I was speaking about was the fact that we're operating in a North American marketplace. Much of our trade goes on between Canada and the United States, and they also have an anti-spam regime, somewhat different from this. I believe this bill will raise the bar on fighting spam here in Canada. But I was just looking for, and putting on the table actually, some suggested areas where we can achieve commonality between the two laws, without reducing the effectiveness of what's been proposed here in Canada, but by avoiding ethical businesses that are engaging in e-mail marketing campaigns in Canada and the U.S.
Many of our members have operations on both sides of the border. Try to get the requirements in e-mail messages, for example, standardized between Canada and the United States. There's a requirement in this bill for the identification of the sender of an e-mail, but added in the Canadian bill is the fact that any service provider that may have sent the message as well has to be included. Well, that's not included in the U.S. framework. For marketers who are operating on both sides of the border, it can often be difficult to tell whether a gmail.com account is in Canada or the United States. It's very difficult.
Businesses could find themselves inadvertently breaking the rules in Canada if we don't try to achieve some commonality between the two regimes, which is something we tried to do under the do-not-call list. You'll recall that the 18-month definition, which is actually in this bill, was initially discussed under that piece of legislation, and we were trying to find some compatibility with the telemarketing rules in the United States.