This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum , where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

An image of Bill C-28 from the Government of Canada’s website (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) – A new Canadian anti-spam law could cost violators up to $10 million, according to a report Thursday by ITbusiness.ca . Individuals violating the law could be fined a maximum penalty of $1 million, while organizations could be charged up to $10 million. While Bill C-28, or the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, received royal assent on December 15, the report says the new law will not be enforced until approximately eight months from now.  A year ago the Canadian government prorogued Parliament , postponing the Bill from being reviewed by the senate until May 2010

Commtouch recently released an interesting study denoting a 30% decline in SPAM activity in Q4.   With the improvements (and proliferation) of consumer SPAM detection tools, as well as the blacklisting of IP space by organizations like   Spamhaus and SpamCop, I believe that SPAM may be starting a much-welcomed death spiral.

A video still of MailChannels CEO Ken Simpson discussing what the company does to prevent outbound spam (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Anti-spam software provider MailChannels ( www.mailchannels.com ) announced Wednesday the wide distribution of its email filtering solution MailChannels Outbound. MailChannels Outbound blocks spam from leaving a service provider’s network

A video still of MailChannels CEO Ken Simpson discussing what the company does to prevent outbound spam (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Anti-spam software provider MailChannels ( www.mailchannels.com ) announced Wednesday the wide distribution of its email filtering solution MailChannels Outbound. MailChannels Outbound blocks spam from leaving a service provider’s network

SpamTitan allows administrators to search and release emails from quarantine, create whitelists and blacklists for their domain, create reports, and view domain history. (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — VMware has certified the flagship spam solution from software developer SpamTitan Technologies ( www.spamtitan.com ) as a “VMware Ready” Mail Security product. SpamTitan offers small and medium-size businesses comprehensive protection from email threats such as including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, phishing, malware and other unwanted content According to SpamTitan’s Thursday announcement, SpamTitan passed a detailed evaluation and testing process on the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance, VMware’s email and collaboration virtual appliance launched in August

Anti-US hacker takes credit for ‘Here you have’ email worm A hacker who claims he was behind a fast-spreading email worm that crippled corporate networks last week said that the worm was designed, in part, as a propaganda tool. The hacker, known as Iraq Resistance, responded to inquiries sent to an email address associated with the “Here you have” worm, which during a brief period early Thursday accounted for about 10 percent of the spam on the Internet