Canada’s Bill C-28 (also knows as CASL) is moving forward with last week’s release of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s final set of regulations under Canada’s new Anti-Spam Law.
The final Regulations include the following changes from the original proposal:
- Clarification that persons sending a message, or persons on whose behalf a message is sent, must identify themselves by the name by which they carry on business.
- Greater choice with respect to the contact information to be provided. Senders, and those seeking consent to send messages, must still include a physical address, but may now provide either a telephone number providing access to an agent or a voice messaging system, an email address or a web address (the original proposal seemed to require the provision of all of these).
- Revised requirements that web-based information be “readily accessible” and that the required unsubscribe mechanism must “be able to be readily performed.” (the original proposed Regulations specified these requirements with reference to a maximum number of “clicks”).
- The revised Regulations now indicate that consent for the receipt of a commercial electronic message may be obtained orally, as well as in writing, as the original proposed regulations provided; however, the Regulations do not provide certainty as to whether electronic forms of consent will be considered to be “in writing,” which was the chief concern of many stakeholders with this requirement.
- The Regulations still require that when seeking consent, requestors must include a statement indicating that consent can be withdrawn, but no longer requires the requestor to specify through which avenues such a withdrawal of consent could be made.
What’s next?
Now that the CRTC has set the ball in motion, we’re waiting for Industry Canada to release their own set of regulations in the coming weeks, with a 30 day comment period to follow. After these comments are reviewed final regulations will be presented and an enforcement date will be set. Industry Canada will hopefully clarify this, but CASL looks to be coming into force sometime in Q3 2012 (October).
Bye for now,
Kevin
