New anti-spam rules reflect (not replace) best practices
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on May 13, 2008
Important movements on the law front in both the USA and Canada...Can-Spam latest
You may have seen the news that the USA's FTC has issued new rulings and interpretations on Can-Spam, the national legislation that defines what you can and can't do with commercial emails.
The press release is here, the related 109-page Federal Register Notice here.
Perhaps the most far-reaching clarification is that senders cannot require subscribers to log in to an account in order to remove their address from a list.
Which might mean subscription options need to be accessible without a username and password.
That has long been a best practice in the email marketing world. So there's a lesson here. Best practices are best practices for a reason. They make marketing sense AND they can often protect you from future changes to legislation.
Canada catches up
Canada was perhaps the most notable industrialized nation not to have specific anti-spam legislation in place. This is now changing.
The S-235 Anti-spam Act ("concerning unsolicited commercial electronic messages") got its first reading in the Canadian Senate on May 7th. Status and text is available here.
As far as I can tell, it requires an opt-in (with some exceptions) before you can send someone commercial email.
And now for the traditional addendum: these laws (actual and proposed) simply state what you have to do to be legal. ISPs, webmail services and individuals use different criteria to decide what is and isn't spam.
Relying on legal compliance alone to keep you in good standing with these entities is like turning up to a Viennese ball in a bikini; legal, but unlikely to meet with a positive welcome.
More on anti-spam laws | Tags: email marketing law, can-spam, anti-spam, spam laws
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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