The government released its response to the House of Commons study on Canada’s anti-spam law this week and while one report suggested that reforms are coming, the reality is that there appears to be little appetite for significant change. I wrote about the law’s effectiveness and appeared before the committee as part of the study. The committee report stopped short of calling for an anti-spam law overhaul, instead recommending clarifications of several provisions in the law.
Post Tagged with: "anti-spam law"
Does Canada’s Anti-Spam Law Really Make It Illegal To Email a Step-Parent or Great Uncle? No.
Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a myriad of posts and articles criticizing Canada’s anti-spam legislation. According to some posts – primarily those by Barry Sookman – the legislation will stop family members from sending commercial email to each other, parents from promoting their children’s lemonade stands, and discriminate against charities and schools. Is this true? In a word, no. While there is little point in unpacking each of the many outrageous claims, over the next few days I’ll offer up a few posts on some of the crazier ones.
Today’s post focuses on the suggestion that families will be stopped from sending commercial messages to other family members. Sookman writes:
Canadian Government Unveils Big Loopholes in Anti-Spam Regulations
Industry Canada unveiled long-awaited revised anti-spam regulations on Friday for the Canadian Anti-Spam Law. The regulations are in draft form and comments can be submitted to the government until February 3rd. Given the intense lobbying by business groups to water down the legislation passed in 2010 and the initial draft 2011 regulations, it comes as little surprise to find that the proposed regulations include several significant loopholes and exceptions that undermine the effectiveness of the law. The key new regulations include:
third party referrals: the regulations include a broad new exception for third party referrals that will allow businesses to send commercial electronic messages without consent based merely on a referral from a third party. This issue was hotly debated when the bill was being drafted and, at the time, the government rejected claims that such an exception was warranted. In the face of intense lobbying, however, the opt-in approach to electronic marketing is being dropped and replaced by a system that allows for unsolicited commercial electronic messages based on third party referrals.
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