California Court Decision Applies CAN-SPAM Act to Social Media
Posted April 13, 2011
As we all know, unsolicited spam email can be annoying and intrusive. In 2003, Congress enacted the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act to curb spam. As required by the Act, the FTC and FCC adopted rules that prohibit sending unwanted commercial messages without prior permission. Among other things, the CAN-SPAM Act makes it "unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission, to a protected computer, of a commercial electronic mail message, or a transaction or relationship message, that contains, or is accompanied by, header information that is materially false or materially misleading."
On March 28, 2011, a U.S. District Court in California held for the first time that the CAN-SPAM Act's restrictions on the transmission of unsolicited commercial e-mail extends beyond traditional e-mail to include communications to other electronic medium, including Facebook friends' walls, news feeds, and home pages. As John Nicholson of Pillsbury's Global Sourcing group describes in detail in a recent Client Alert found here, the ruling is the most expansive judicial interpretation so far regarding the types of messages that fall within the scope of the CAN-SPAM Act.
John's Client Alert is definitely worth a read for companies using social media in marketing. As John points out, companies should verify that they (and any marketing services they engage) comply with CAN-SPAM's requirements for commercial messages sent via social media platforms.