Unwanted e-mails on the rise
but RACSA can divert them


Unwanted e-mail messages have increased up to 300 percent for many Internet users in Costa Rica.

The reason seems to have several factors. First, unwanted e-mails or spam also increase around Christmas as marketeers try to promote their products as gifts.

In addition, a proliferation of trojans are automatically sending e-mail messages from infected computers. Many of the spam messages are designed to trick computer users into opening a file online and infecting their own computer.

Radiográfica Costarricense S.A., the Internet provider known as RACSA, seems to have had success with its new Barracuda spam protection system. The software channels unwanted e-mails into a special inbox.

A.M. Costa Rica monitored e-mail messages forwarded from an unprotected e-mail address to a protected RACSA account. Some unwanted messages did arrive at the protected account but the number was about 25 percent of those forwarded. The remainder were identified and diverted as unwanted spam messages.

The bulk of the spam are gambling or sexual in nature, suggesting that pills could change the size of body parts or improve personal relations. Many of these are linked not to a sales site but to malicious files that will damage a computer or duplicate and send spam messages. Some pretend to be links to online greeting cards.

The unwanted messages now seem to be coming from all over the globe. Some sampled Sunday came from Trinidad or Taiwan, according to the e-mail addresses of the senders. But the return addresses may be falsified.

Classified advertisers in A.M. Costa Rica are vulnerable when they place e-mail addresses in their ads. The newspaper recommends that advertisers use e-mail addresses from free sources such as Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo and then discard them after they have sold or otherwise concluded a business transaction from the advertisement.

Of course some of the unwanted messages are efforts to obtain bank account information and passwords by trickery.

Treaty opponents will seek
to get vote on veggie bills


Free trade opponents have obtained approval from the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones  to gather signatures for a referendum on two key measures that will implement what Costa Rica has promised to do under the agreement.

A coalition of environmental groups and members of the so-called patriotic committees opposing the trade treaty announced Thursday that they had been given the green light to collect signatures. But this could not be confirmed until Friday.

The tribunal finally confirmed that it issued a resolution Dec. 21 approving the gathering of signatures.

The referendum proposal targets two related measures. One would provide patent protection for those who create plant species or other forms of life. The second would put Costa Rica into an international treaty that says the same thing. Some 63 countries already have approved the treaty.

Despite a constitutional clause, Costa Rica has weak rules for enforcing patents. The trade treaty requires that the country strengthen those laws. The measure under attack is straightforward: Anyone who develops a new variety is given the rights to market it for 20 years. The term is 25 years if the plant is a perennial. There are some exceptions for others doing research and small and mid-size farms. The penalty for violation is a jail term.

It is about to be reported out of committee for floor action when the legislature convenes in January.

Eugenio Trejos Benavides, rector of the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, is a national leader in opposition to the free trade treaty. He testified against the bill and said the law only would benefit developed countries that have a greater capacity for creating new varieties of vegetables.

Trejos said the proposal was a menace for agricultural producers as well as for the possible loss of native seed materials and for the dependence that would be placed on foreign firms to provide new varieties.

Other opponents have gone even further and claimed incorrectly that farmers would not be able to plant seeds saved from their prior year's harvest.

However, some Costa Rican firms in the business of producing new seed and plant species have testified in favor of the measure as have some university representatives who see their institutions profiting from discoveries.

Another intellectual property measure in the legislature would protect more conventional forms of discoveries and creative activities. That measure has come under attack because it provides jail terms of up to eight years for those who steal another's creative work or creation, such as a book, play or song.

Even the Costa Rican Sala IV constitutional court in a review of that measure said the penalties were too harsh.

Free trade opponents probably know that they will be unable to get the required 40 percent of the citizenry to the polls to vote on vegetables, but the effort to collect signatures is a stalling tactic. Costa Rica is supposed to approve 11 more treaty-related measures by the end of February. One already has been approved.

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