Email Laws That Could Bring You to Jail Even if Youre Not Spamming
First things first, I'm not a legal expert and so this article DOES NOT represent any legal or professional information and nor can I guarantee its accuracy. I only wrote this article to introduce you to these email laws that might affect us, email marketers. OK, so what're these email laws? They're the Child Protection Registry laws that have been taken into effect in the State of Michigan and Utah. These laws established "Do Not Email" registries into which individuals or institutions that primarily serve minors can enter minors' email addresses or any email address to which minors may have access. Institutions or entities that primarily serve minors can also register their entire domain names. People are prohibited by these laws from sending email to the addresses that have been in the registries for 30 days or more if the email contains material or link to material that is illegal for minors. And it doesn't matter whether the email is solicited or unsolicited, you still can't send such email. You might think that the materials must be something obvious such as pornography, gambling, alcohol, etc. Yes, but they're only part of the materials. The other part consists of less obvious stuff, namely stuff that looks fine, but might be illegal for minors because minors are prohibited by law from viewing, receiving, participating, possessing, or purchasing this stuff. This includes automotive sales, etc. And according to the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, these laws apply to almost all people in the United States and even those outside the United States who have a physical presence in the United States. (see http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php) So, imagine you have some email addresses in your list that happen to be already in the "do not email" registry for 30 days, but you're not aware of them. And one day, you send an email that contains a link to a webpage that has some Adsense ads that advertise some automotive sales, guess what may happen to you? Well, your action may be considered as a computer crime and you might face civil suit and fines or/and you might even face criminal suit and penalty. So far, there are two things that you can do to prevent you from getting trouble with these laws. First, make sure that you never send email that contains material or link to material which is illegal for minors. This is so obvious, right? Second, if you think that you can't comply with the first option, then you can purge your list by matching it against the registries in a regular basis. But there are fees for this. Don't panic about these laws. Instead, find more information about it. You can start learning more about these laws by visiting the references below: - Michigan Children's Protection Registry site:
https://www.protectmichild.com - Michigan Public Act No. 241:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2003-2004/publicact/htm/2004-PA-0241.htm - Michigan Public Act No. 242:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2003-2004/publicact/htm/2004-PA-0242.htm - Utah Code - Child Protection Registry:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~code/TITLE13/13_26.htm - Michigan government's press release: http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-23442_21974-121645--,00.html About the Author Mohamad Zaki Hussein is the webmaster of http://www.webtrafficideas.com. To learn how to increase web site traffic to your website by using a combination of Viral Marketing, RSS and Blog, grab the FREE "Instant Traffic Formula" report at http://www.webtrafficideas.com/getviral.
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New Potential Legal Risks From Email Programs:
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Finally, there is a common assumption that the email laws of other countries are similar to those in the US, however in many important respects this is not true. The differences in these laws compels (at the least) strict controls be maintained for any lists that are not fully geographically targeted.
See the Email PhD "Compliance" section to research the email regulatory environment further.
New Service Access Risks From Email Programs:
Impact on Your Personal Communications
Some online publishers assume that higher risk email programs, such as newsletters or promotional campaigns, are somehow naturally distinct or compartmentalized away from other types of personal email channels. Unless specifically designed as such, this is usually not true. It has come as an unpleasant surprise to many that blocking caused by, for example, an email marketing campaign can also cause the blocking of your email to friends and family. Blocking caused by a simple auto-response program at a minor Web site can disrupt your ability to communicate with anyone at a particular ISP.
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Recipient ISP Disruption
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See the Email PhD "Sending Signature Management" section for more information on avoiding basic disruptions within your email service chain.
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Changing Consumer Perceptions
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See the Email PhD "Content Controls" section to further research customer perception management issues.
Increasing Costs Within the New Email Environment
By all accounts commercial email can no longer be treated as if it were free. Whether for increasing internal control time and costs, or external service costs, you need to allocate the resources necessary to operate a sustainable and effective email program.
Increasing need for technical and strategic expertise
More than ever before, email has become a domain requiring a broad mix of different types of expertise. Because this knowledge can be highly specialized, or require access to proprietary data, this expertise often needs to be acquired from outside the sending organization.
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Additional costs for administration and controls
Compliance elements and rising recipient expectations require more time and better records, and the need to track and respond to all complaints from numerous sources has added new manpower requirements. Of course, the costs of defensive records and permission audit trails are also growing. While these costs pale beside potential costs of non-compliance or customer erosion, in many cases they represent new and unfamiliar budget items.
Costs from distributed bandwidth and sending system architecture
The need to segment and distribute outbound email streams can increase both bandwidth and technical administration costs. The need to capture and retain more extensive records, or to access sending, delivery, response, unsubscribe, and complaint information in a timely fashion may require additional investment in computing hardware. Updated sending and tracking software purchases may also be needed.
Performance Benefits That Offset Costs
Simply put, you may have to absorb many of these costs to maintain effective, deliverable, and sustainable email programs. It is very likely that without this investment the efficiency of your email program will continue to slide, at the same time that the risks of uncontrolled programs are increasing.
Conclusions:
Over all, email sending programs have moved significantly away from the simple question of what "can" be done to a much heavier emphasis on what "should" be done, based upon increasing legal and recipient perception risks. The cost of sustaining effective programs is growing. Fortunately, so is the differential advantage of maintaining a working email communications channel.
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