CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
Answering @drdigipol
Image via Wikipedia Al Iverson, my good friend, asked me to have a look at a question asked on Twitter by @drdigipol about DNSBLs and advocacy groups. Here’s the question (in case you don’t feel like following the link): Question re SPAM Blacklist Services: What r policies re advocacy orgs that send email not covered [...]
Ten Business Days Doesn’t Help
Image via Wikipedia I unsubscribed from a mailing list recently. When I did, I was confronted with the following message: We’re sorry to see you go. You should be aware that it could take up to ten business days to completely remove your address from our lists. That’s a pretty standard disclaimer that complies with [...]
Pre-Existing Business Relationships Don’t Matter
Image by Getty Images via Daylife I was reading the Terms of Service for an ESP today. Under the section entitled “Affirmative Consent” we read: Clients may only use [the ESP] to send email to individuals who have either provided affirmative consent through an “opt-in” process that they want to receive the type of email [...]
When is a press release an advertisement?
Image via Wikipedia One of the first things I learned when I became a legal assistant is that there are rarely any pat answers. A blanket assertion is almost always wrong. (Did you see the attorney-like weasel wording there?) There has been an interesting discussion on Twitter today regarding a February Techcrunch post (and wow [...]
“The recession has forced us to drop this etiquette.”
Image by Getty Images via Daylife semantics definition se·man·tics (-tiks) noun the branch of linguistics concerned with the nature, the structure, and the development and changes of the meanings of speech forms, or with contextual meaning semiotics the branch of semiotics dealing with relationships of signs and symbols to the things to which they refer, [...]
The Legal Status of Feedback Loops
An interesting question comes in today: “Is it required by law to unsubscribe feedback loop complaints received by senders?” And I call it interesting because it’s a question dealing with legal status, and not best practices. So, today’s post gets a caveat: I am not an attorney licensed to practice in any jurisdiction and so [...]
Handling Unsubscribe Requests
Image via Wikipedia When someone wants off of your list what do you do? Obviously, the answer to that question is “remove them.” Just as important of a consideration is “How do you go about doing that?” Commercial email is an animal all to itself. If you have a falling out with your best friend, [...]
Top 10 Posts of 2009
So, yesterday I put out a list of the bottom 10 posts of 2009. I promised then that I’d put out a list of the top 10 posts today, and here they are (in reverse order — #1 is really #10). IP relisted despite no more mail being sent. It seems like I blogged about [...]
When is transactional mail not transactional anymore?
Image via Wikipedia An interesting question came across my desk this morning. Here’s the request from someone we’ll call “Joe”: I need some help understanding CAN-SPAM requirements. I represent a membership organization. From time to time, we send marketing message to our members and, of course, some of the unsubscribe from those messages. Now we [...]
Use Private Domain Registration and Go to Jail?
Image via Wikipedia As reported on Spamsuite, the 9th Circuit opinion in USA v. Kilbride, (9th Cir., 2009) has been released. This is primarily an obscenity case against the defendants for sending pornographic spam email. But, it also includes a challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 1037 on vagueness grounds. 18 U.S.C. § 1037 is the [...]
Shameless Self-Promotion
