California Court holds, the can-SPAM applies to social networking communications

This is a guest post from Richard B. Newman -an Internet & affiliate marketing advocate

The CAN-SPAM Act makes it unlawful for persons to initiate the transmission of commercial e-Mail messages that contain much false or misleading header information.  CAN-SPAM defines "Electronic Mail Message" as "a message that is sent to a unique e-Mail address."  It defines further "e-Mail address" as a "goal, General expressed as a sequence of characters, consisting of a unique user name or mailbox and a reference to an Internet domain, whether displayed, to which an e-Mail message be sent or delivered can."

On the 28 March 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, instead, that the CAN-SPAM Act (the "Act") limits for the transmission of unsolicited commercial email ("UCE") beyond conventional E-mail to communicate with other electronic destinations, including Facebook user walls, News feeds and news on the network.  Facebook Inc. v. MaxBounty, Inc. (n.d. CAL, no. 10-4712, 3/28/11).  The judgment is one of the most expansive judicial interpretations, date, of the types of messages that fall within the scope of the Act.

District Court judge Jeremy Fogel found that this problem was one of first impression in the Ninth Circuit, directly addressing the question of whether the Act on social networking communication applies, that comparable are delivered not to the "Inbox" with conventional E-mail.  Previous California District Court decisions have found that the Statute "e-Mail like" news on the MySpace social network transferred achieved.  These courts reached the result by the consideration of the Act legislative history, pointing out that the law designed to ensure comfort and efficiency of electronic messaging systems, and saw no reason in the Statute for its reporting on e-mail limited.  So the extension of this analysis gave judge Fogel, that the law also reached other types of social networking communication.  Such messages require to carry out Facebook routing measures, therefore apply the law to this communication is consistent with Congressional intent, to mitigate deceptive commercial communications, which "overloading infrastructure."

Facebook claims that MaxBounty violated the law by enrolling subsidiary in unfair and deceptive ad campaigns involved the creation of fictitious Facebook profiles with the promise of free products.  Had to register, users agree, each of their Facebook friends, among other things to tell.  These notifications a Facebook account settings have been transferred by the Subscriber, but could potentially be delivered wall, in his or her news feed, a user of Facebook were as a posting to the user message to the external E-mail addresses of users.  The Court came to the conclusion that any type of message according to the law could fall.

The Act was on the whole, apply, and its restrictions on misleading header information reach all communications on unique electronic destinations, not only for traditional E-mail sent.

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Richard B. Newman is an Internet lawyer and
Business litigation lawyer at Hinch Newman LLP
………………………………………………………………………………… *Advertising publishing and information policy*.

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