You Can SPAM, Legally?

Sort of. The Federal Courts in Utah and California have taken the position that using hidden proxies to register your domains and conceal your true identity is a violation of Section 7704(a)(1)(C) and is materially misleading because a recipient cannot identify the sender from the “from” name or the publicly available whois information.

The court further stated that since all ICCAN approved domain name vendors must have a prohibition against using the domain for sending Spam, using any ICCAN approved vendor is prohibited and therefore misleading and a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

The California Court also said that putting disclosures in images violates the CAN-SPAM Act’s requirement for conspicuous postings since images can be lost in transmission or lost due to technical difficulties.

Internet attorney Andrew Jaffe has this to say about the issue:

I would usually make some comments about how to work around these rules.  However, just saying don’t use images is pretty obvious.  I have always suggested signing up for domains using the company’s information and putting in the user name a company title (i.e. web master.)

Finally, I do not know where to find domain names that are not ICANN issued.  Maybe overseas?  Further, there are probably some ICANN resellers who neglect to put the spam prohibition in their TOS.  Mailers should check to TOS of any site where they are going to buy domains.

Contact Andrew Jaffe directly with any questions you may have.