http://performinsider.com/2013/06/m...egal-images-violate-can-spam-for-disclosures/ Apparently this recent court case ruled the use of an image as an unsubscribe link, illegal and against CAN-SPAM compliance. In addition, any registration of a domain to mail with on a proxy is considered misleading information. Curious on what everyone's take on this is...?
Yeah.. Just means more money will be spent on po-boxes and "virtual" offices like regus. I always avoided using private domain registrations and just ended up using the same PO boxes I used in sender information in the message footer. There are still ways to use an image that doesn't require the image to be loaded from a remote host which is what the court mentioned..
This was only a preliminary ruling/the judge's opinion. Its not binded into law yet - can spam doesn't specifically state you can't use an image for your unsub.
Yup, just a default judgement from a District Court Judge. This means no one submitted a counter-argument and the case has to be ruled by at least Appeals Court to become case law... Here the plaintiff submitted their one-sided theory and the judge just rubber-stamped it without any discussion.
Ah, I see. Well, I'll leave it to someone else to challenge while I sit here and continue to mail with image unsubs :wink:
Right but it's so vague and open-ended that it could be interpreted that way. So far one judge has interpreted it that way and while it's yet to be challenged it certainly doesn't bode well.
This too. I mean, I feel like I'd rather cover my own ass rather than have the guesswork or the open-endedness of it being pseudo-compliant. But for now, I think I'm following CAN-SPAM, as far as I can read. The loopholes lawyers tend to find is an inevitability I guess, because well, that's what they do.
If you want to be safe put your advertising address/instructions in the alt-text of your unsub image... but that in itself comes with a boatload of new problems you'll have.
until firm case law has been established you can continue to follow current CAN-SPAM laws and "run whatchu brung" - IMO that is. And - IMO - until the CAN-SPAM act is updated to include unsub image vs. raw text - I'm runnin' images tyvm.
The law was always open ended - just like any other law. Anyone can twist it the way they want and propose their own interpretation - just like anyone always could. The key question is whether there is any case law binding to other courts created by this case and the answer to this question is no. However the plaintiff's argument will no doubt be used again. How it may fare against a competent defense presenting a counter-argument remains to be seen.
