[epub] Re: Doomsday?

[Janet Roberts <janet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 04:32 PM 11/16/2003 -0600, Azriel Winnett wrote:
> Does this really mean the end of the road for publishers of
> free opt-in newsletters who may have subscribers in
> California, unless both their newsletters and websites are
> free of advertising?
>
> Or is Dennis over-reacting?

Hi Azriel and epubbers:

I would NEVER say Boogie Jack overreacts -- he lives too close to me; he'd 
probably come over and pound me. But I do believe the situation isn't quite 
as dire as BJ foresees.

The senator who is credited with writing most of  California's new spam 
legislation has said several times that he did not intend to include 
advertisers in permission-based email newsletters. He seems to understand 
the distinction between solo ad mailings and ads in ezines. He has put this 
objection on record, and it is one of the areas in the new law that has 
already been targeted for modifying, according to news I've read in places 
like DIRECT and DMNews.

What Boogie Jack wrote about is a speech that came out of Bigfoot 
Interactive's email summit last week, in which this apparent requirement of 
advertisers to get permission separate from email newsletter publishers was 
repeated. It isn't really "new" news; we've covered the implications for 
newsletter publishers in List-News and a little bit in Ezine-Tips. It's 
really an extreme view of the problem. While I don't want to minimize the 
problems the law could cause, I would also point out that the law hasn't 
gone into effect yet.

Boogie Jack also says he doesn't have the cash to mount a legal challenge 
to the law. He doesn't have to. The DMA is the deep-pockets organization 
that probably has a lawsuit humming right now in some lawyer's briefcase 
right now. I would be really surprised if a legal challenge doesn't pop up 
this month or in early to mid-December.

What Boogie J. is doing, though, is very cleverly covering his assets by 
asking people to reconfirm their permission, this time knowing with the 
explicit understanding that they're getting outside ads as part of their 
email newsletter subscription. To me, it's the same thing as we talked 
about here a few weeks back about whether permission expires if you stop 
publishing for a while. It's not clear to me whether Boogie will take off 
anyone who doesn't reconfirm, though.

I'd also be really surprised if Congress can spit out anti-spam legislation 
in time before the Thanksgiving-Christmas recess, which I think starts on 
Nov. 21 -- Friday! Holy cow! That time already. Congress won't be back in 
session until after Jan. 1, when the California bill becomes law, so there 
will probably be a window of about
a month to a few months where the law could cause problems.

But I still think the big spammers, and the direct marketers rather than 
individual email publishers will be the first targets.

Janet
http://Ezine-Tips.com/



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