When is a press release an advertisement?
One of the first things I learned when I became a legal assistant is that there are rarely any pat answers. A blanket assertion is almost always wrong. (Did you see the attorney-like weasel wording there?) There has been an interesting discussion on Twitter today regarding a February Techcrunch post (and wow, is a half-month Read More
“The recession has forced us to drop this etiquette.”
semantics definition se·man·tics (-tiks) noun the branch of linguistics concerned with the nature, the structure, and the development and changes of the meanings of speech forms, or with contextual meaning semiotics the branch of semiotics dealing with relationships of signs and symbols to the things to which they refer, or with referential meaning the relationships Read More
The Eleventh Commandment
When you do business with a government agency, at just about any level, you surrender a certain amount of privacy. Whatever you give to the agency is likely going to be subject to so-called “sunshine” laws that go by names like “Freedom of Information” or “Freedom of Access.” Recently, some sportsmen have discovered this the hard Read More
Settlement in Comcast v. e360Insight
I’ve got a lot of catching up to do on Spamsuite.com, but there is a new document up there tonight. It appears that there has been a settlement filed in Comcast‘s counter-claim against David Linhardt and his (multiple) email marketing (and hosting) companies. I have a bit of analysis up there at Spamsuite, but I think it’s important to Read More
Spammer is as spammer does
Laura has an outstanding post about coming changes to reputation systems up at her blog. If you haven’t had a look at it, you should. Part of one of the comments, though, has caused a bit of a commotion: While I’m with you in spirit, I’m not optimistic that “blocking ESPs” will have much of a lasting Read More
Barry Speaks: We won’t shut-up and eat your spam
Today we have a guest post from the ever popular Barry. Al Iverson, Too Much Contact, Spam Resource (2009), http://www.spamresource.com/2009/10/too-much-contact.html. Barry is overworked, underpaid, and wants to get the word out: I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about how ESPs think the ISPs should just shut up and eat their spam. That if the Read More
When is transactional mail not transactional anymore?
An interesting question came across my desk this morning. Here’s the request from someone we’ll call “Joe”: I need some help understanding CAN-SPAM requirements. I represent a membership organization. From time to time, we send marketing message to our members and, of course, some of the unsubscribe from those messages. Now we are getting to Read More
The hard truth about email
Many clients expect email to be sort of an automatic thing. The thinking is “I should hit ‘Send’ and it should arrive within moments.” So, sometimes those of us who work in email hear comments like the following: I understand that these delays may not be your fault, but we can’t have delays. and: It’s Read More
Breaking: SORBS bought by GFI (with confirmation!)
Jed Smith is reporting that SORBS has been purchased by GFI Software for “for a cool half a mil”. Not being one to sit idly by, I went for comment directly to GFI. Here is their response, sent via David Kelleher, GFI’s PR Manager: GFI Software, a leading infrastructure provider, has acquired SORBS, one of the premier anti-spam reputation services Read More
Use Private Domain Registration and Go to Jail?
The 9th Circuit opinion in USA v. Kilbride has been released. This is primarily an obscenity case against the defendants for sending pornographic spam email. But, it also includes a challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 1037 on vagueness grounds. 18 U.S.C. § 1037 is the part of the [acp id=”Wikimedia-01″ media=”wiki” title=”CAN-SPAM Act of 2003″ Read More