AOL has announced its support for an antispam initiative in Maryland that would impose criminal penalties against spammers.

The Maryland Spam Control Act would impose tough criminal penalties against the most egregious spammers who use fraud tactics to get spam into consumers’ email inboxes. Breaking this law could warrant jail time, asset forfeiture and monetary penalties.

“If the Maryland Spam Control Act is adopted -- and we hope it will be in this session of the Legislature -- it will be a significant and much needed, new weapon to ‘can-the-spam,’ which all starts with our members referring spam to us using AOL’s ‘Report Spam’ button,” says Randall Boe, executive vice president and general counsel, AOL.

Meanwhile, the European Union also vowed to stop spam. EU telecommunications ministers meeting in Brussels said they would speed up implementation of an EU-wide law proposed two years ago that bans commercial spam.

"We have agreed next steps in the national and international fight against spam in order to prevent it undermining consumer and business confidence," says Erkki Liikanen, EU information society commissioner. "There are still things to be done, but we have moved a further step in the right direction."