Email Laws That Could Bring You To Jail Even If You’re Not Spamming

Email Laws That Could Bring You To Jail Even If You’re Not Spamming

By Mohamad Zaki Hussein

Firstthings first, I’m not a legal expert and so this article DOES NOTrepresent any legal or professional information and nor can I guaranteeits accuracy. I only wrote this article to introduce you to these emaillaws 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.

Theselaws established"Do Not Email"registries into which individuals orinstitutions that primarily serve minors can enter minors’ emailaddresses or any email address to which minors may have access.Institutions or entities that primarily serve minors can also registertheir entire domain names.

People are prohibited by these lawsfrom sending email to the addresses that have been in the registriesfor 30 days or more if the email contains material or link to materialthat is illegal for minors. And it doesn’t matter whether the email issolicited or unsolicited, you still can’t send such email.

Youmight think that the materials must be something obvious such aspornography, gambling, alcohol, etc. Yes, but they’re only part of thematerials.

The other part consists of less obvious stuff, namelystuff that looks fine, but might be illegal for minors because minorsare 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 PublicPolicy, these laws apply to almost all people in the United States andeven those outside the United States who have a physical presence inthe United States. (seehttp://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php)

So,imagine you have some email addresses in your list that happen to bealready in the"do not email"registry for 30 days, but you’re notaware of them. And one day, you send an email that contains a link to awebpage that has some Adsense ads that advertise some automotive sales,guess what may happen to you?

Well, your action may beconsidered as a computer crime and you might face civil suit and finesor/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 tomaterial 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 canpurge your list by matching it against the registries in a regularbasis. But there are fees for this.

Don’t panic about theselaws. Instead, find more information about it. You can start learningmore 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 ofhttp://www.webtrafficideas.com.To learn how to increase online traffic to your website by using acombination of Viral Marketing, RSS and Blog, grab the FREE"InstantTraffic Formula"report athttp://www.webtrafficideas.com/getviral.

Source:www.isnare.com