CAN-SPAM Act updated

By Jim Kinkade

As if the rules for the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act weren't nebulous and ineffective enough, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently adopted some changes to the law to make it even more confusing.

Legitimate email marketers already conforming to these practices -- which are minimal at best -- should not be affected by the rulings. I offer a brief analysis, however, so you can stay abreast of the changes.

May 2008 changes to some of the provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act include:

• An e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply email message or visiting a single Internet web page, in order to opt out of receiving future e-mails from a sender.

I'm surprised that the FTC feels the need to explain that this is inappropriate behavior. People who resort to such practices are already breaking numerous laws; they will not care about adding the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to their list.

• The definition of "sender" was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act's opt-out requirements.

This is actually a good thing. There are too many instances where a benevolent third party (like Arial Software) gets lumped in as a party to sending unsolicited bulk email when our customers choose not behave themselves online. Of course, this change is all just legalese, and compliance with this provision won't help with the black hole lists that have their own rules and regulations for email delivery.

• A "sender" of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act's requirement that a commercial e-mail display a "valid physical postal address."

Allowing senders to use a P.O. box might help with those companies who want to avoid disgruntled recipients from coming to their offices and going postal on them. Again, legitimate email marketers should have nothing to fear from posting their physical address.

• A definition of the term "person" was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM's obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Now coverage of the act ostensibly includes: unnatural persons, clones, recently evolved sentient beings, and self-aware artificial intelligences. Glad they cleared that up. I was beginning to wonder if they really thought this act through when they wrote it.

Some of the proposed changes that were tabled include: shortening the time to honor unsubscribe requests, and addressing forward to friend features and transactional/relationship messaging. The changes specify, "As a general matter, if the seller offers something of value in exchange for forwarding a commercial message, the seller must comply with the Act's requirements, such as honoring opt-out requests."

Just add these changes to your list of hoops through which you have to jump to prove that you are a legitimate email marketer. It always pays off in the end to conform to higher email delivery standards.— Arial Software

New provisions to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 can be found on the FTC's website
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/05/canspam.shtm

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