Where are the laws on spam, specifically in Canada and America. I know email marketing is basically spam, but what about.. spamming people in chat spamming comments in youtube spamming forums spamming facebook and myspace with messages on people's profiles are those illegal?
that depends on the service providers. each have their own rules against spam. facebook, myspace decide what is the toleration limit for them.
It is definitely against the TOS of service of those sites, meaning you will be banned if you do it. Is it illegal though, I don't know.
There are lots of spam laws but I don't really seen much enforcement as spam is more international in nature, there are a few high profile arrests but most of the time not much action is taken, my spam filters typically filter millions in a single day on our 600 server systems.
Spam laws are directed at email. I am not aware of any laws concerning other types of spam. There are laws against harrassment though and cyber stalking. Depending on the type of spam at a site those laws MIGHT apply. Also there are hacker laws against such things as Denial Of Service attacks. So let's say that a spammer is using a BOT to make blog posts...one MIGHT argue this is a DOS attack especially if it fills your hosting account with junk. Let's be realistic though. The current laws are mostly not only inadequate but rarely enforced.
Most spam comes from APNIC and RIPE ip blocks. Some of those countries have poor laws on spam & any laws in general. Most warez sites (illegal file sharing) come from APNIC and RIPE too.
As far as I know only "email spam" is illegal in the U.S, but .your ISP or hosting provider can banned you from their services if spamming is against their policy.
Spammers get Jailtime - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050408/1358221.shtml I don't think they technically illegal BUT I think each seperate group has it's own TOS and if you break them you get booted - probably forever, why would anyone do that intentionally?