CAN-SPAM Act Of 2003: Did You Know?

Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 13 of October , 2007 at 8:20 am

Continuing from the previous two posts about the CAN-SPAM Act, Section 6 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 explicitly makes it unlawful for any business to violate the spam laws even if they are not themselves actively using e-mail marketing to promote their businesses.

The act explicitly states:

(a) IN GENERAL- It is unlawful for a person to promote, or allow the promotion of, that person’s trade or business, or goods, products, property, or services sold, offered for sale, leased or offered for lease, or otherwise made available through that trade or business, in a commercial electronic mail message the transmission of which is in violation of section 5(a)(1) if that person–

(1) knows, or should have known in the ordinary course of that person’s trade or business, that the goods, products, property, or services sold, offered for sale, leased or offered for lease, or otherwise made available through that trade or business were being promoted in such a message;

(2) received or expected to receive an economic benefit from such promotion; and

(3) took no reasonable action–

(A) to prevent the transmission; or

(B) to detect the transmission and report it to the Commission.

In other words, if you knew of the e-mail transmissions promoting your business and expected to profit from that without taking reasonable actions to stop the e-mail transmissions, then you are guilty of spam. This law is in place to stop people from hiring third parties to do their dirty work. Just because someone else is doing it for you - it could even be a sister or brother doing it for free - then that doesn’t mean you aren’t liable. It’s your business; you are responsible.

Bottom line: Don’t authorize spam for your business at all. Period.

Website Design & Website Development Price Quotes – Compare and Save!

Category: Not Spam

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg

No comments yet.