My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC Version, webpage version) examines America Online and Yahoo!’ s recent announcement of a new fee-based system for commercial email. I argue that certified email will do little to address spam and may not attract a large client base. Rather, its more significant impact lies in the fact that it is yet another step toward the two-tiered Internet that will ultimately shift new costs to consumers.
Post Tagged with: "spam"
Two-Tier Email
The NY Times reports that AOL and Yahoo! plan to implement a new email certification program that will ultimately force commercial emailers to pay a fraction of a cent per email to deliver their emails. The program, discussed throughout the week in the trade press (here, here and here) envisions […]
Crystal Ball Gazing At The Coming Year in Tech Law
Predicting the future of Canadian technology law is challenging at the best of times, but during an election campaign prognostications are admittedly likely to be about as accurate as a coin flip. With that caveat in mind, my weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, freely available version) offers up […]
Competition Bureau Obtains Consent Decrees Against Two Spammers
Nearly a year after its last round of anti-spam actions, the Canadian Competition Bureau yesterday announced settlements with two Canadian spamming operations that used spam to promote a "bogus" product called Fuel Saver Pro. The joint announcement with the FTC suggested that there were hundreds of victims worldwide from the […]
On the Legislative Front
For those not closely tracking Hansard and government releases, there have been some noteworthy developments and non-developments in recent days. Bill C-37, the do-not-call bill, is racing through the Senate. The bill is already at second reading with some commentary from the Senators. No word on whether additional hearings on […]