If It Looks Like Spam
A recent court ruling in Illinois has vast implications for direct marketers. And if there’s one lesson DMers must take from the decision it’s this: Rightly or wrongly, simply complying with Can Spam is not enough to get e-mail delivered.
It doesn’t matter if the sender’s list is triple-verified-we-even-called-just-to-make-sure opt-in, if an Internet service provider decides a mailer’s e-mail is spam and blocks it, the ISP has every legal right to do so.
In April, Judge James B. Zagel of the U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois determined that Comcast is not liable for mistakenly blocking even permission-based e-mail when it’s part of a good-faith effort to protect its subscribers from spam, nullifying a lawsuit brought by e360’s CEO Dave Linhardt against the cable broadband provider.
Comcast is America’s No. 2 ISP with 13.2 million subscribers and a 13.5% share of the market, according to ISP Planet. Linhardt sued Comcast in January, accusing it of unfairly blocking messages that he said were permission based. However, Judge Zagel ruled that Can Spam compliance
