Canadian anti-spam regulations

Canada passed an anti-spam law in 2010. Implementation of this law (CASL) were initially scheduled to go into effect in 2011. That deadline has passed and it’s not looking good for a 2012 date, either.
Canada’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is the agency responsible for enforcement and rulemaking. This week they published 2 bulletins to help guide companies on how to comply with the law.
Guidelines on the use of toggling as a means of obtaining express consent under Canada’s anti-spam legislation
Guidelines on the interpretation of the Electronic Commerce Protection Regulations (CRTC)
The bulletins themselves offer examples of acceptable and unacceptable ways to acquire consent and process unsubscribes. I encourage everyone that sends mail into Canada to go review them. I’ll be writing about the regulations after I’ve taken some time to digest the recommendations.

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Canadian Anti-Spam Law

A few years ago, Canada passed an anti-spam law (CASL). In the time since then, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commissions (CRTC) have been working to establish the regulations to implement the law. Those regulations appear to have been published recently. Matt Vernhout, a email expert and Canadian citizen, published a link to the regulations and a summary of the rules.
There still doesn’t seem to be a firm date for when CASL will be enforced law. Matt says he’s hearing that the date will be around October. We’ll see if it slips from that.
 

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Maine backs away from new marketing restrictions

The WSJ reports that politicians in Maine have figured out that the new Maine law prohibiting collecting information from teenagers without parental permission is badly written and has a lot of problems.
The Attorney General has decided not to enforce the law as it stands. The law does contain private right of action, so there may be private suits filed against companies.
I can’t necessarily fault the state senator who drafted the legislation for her intentions.

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Canada passes anti-spam bill

Call it C-28, call it FISA, call it COPL, just don’t call it a pipe dream any longer.
Today the Canadian anti spam law received royal assent and is now law. ReturnPath is saying it will take effect September 2011, but that’s the only date I’ve seen published. The full text of the bill as passed by the House of Commons can be found at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/content/hoc/Bills/403/Government/C-28/C-28_3/C-28_3.PDF
It’s fairly dense and I’m still reading through the final version. Of critical importance for anyone marketing in Canada is that it sets requirements that commercial email be sent with the permission of the recipient. This is different from CAN SPAM here in the US which doesn’t require consent of the recipient, but allows anyone to send unsolicited email as long as it meets the standards set by the law.
CBC Story

Return Path blog post
CAUCE posts
Thin Data implementation guide

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