Don't even think about sending porn spam unless you put a warning label on it saying SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT. So says the Federal Trade Commission, which adopted a new rule requiring the label that takes effect May 19.
"I think it's a good thing," said RatedHot.com owner Marsha Youngs when she learned about the new rule. "Most spammers don't know who's going to be opening the e-mails. It could be a kid. I think it's the very least a spammer could do to help keep kids away from such material. It'll be something easy they can put in the topic while they're setting up the e-mail to be sent. And it will certainly make it easier to filter out such trash. Even I hate reciving spam like that."
Chicago-based attorney J.D. Obenberger, a longtime critic of porn spam – who has called it "urinating in the well we all drink from" – praised the new labeling rule. "Down the road, in the final analysis, this measure will be understood to have immeasurably helped the mainstream, responsible operators of today's adult Internet."
Obenberger said the labeling might reshuffle market traffic dominance away from the worst of the porn spammers and into the direction of the quality content providers.
The FTC was mandated under the new CAN-SPAM act to adopt such a rule regarding sexually-oriented spam, the better to let the recipients know before they open an e-mail that it contains adult material and to filter or delete it before they are compelled against their will to see it.
Under the text of the new rule, SEXUALLY-EXLPLICIT is prescribed as the notice CAN-SPAM mandates. It must be included in both the subject line of any unsolicited e-mail containing sexually-oriented material, and in "the electronic equivalent of a 'brown paper wrapper' in the body of the message," as the FTC put it: what a recipient will see when first opening the message will have the mark or notice, certain other specified information, and no other information or images.
Youngs had one caution when considering whether the new labeling and "brown paper wrapper" requirement would work completely against children seeing adult material. "It'll only work," she said, "if parents are monitoring what their kids are doing online."
RainMaker host SEGuru said he thought the labeling question presented a complicated situation. "We have long known that this was coming," he said. "As a parent, I'd enjoy the opportunity to trim the volume of sexually explicit material my children may be exposed to in an inbox. [But] as an online marketer, I also understand the implications this has from a precedent standpoint."
The new FTC rule, the commission said, is different than its original proposal: the final mark is shorter than the originally-proposed SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-CONTENT; and, the mandatory disclosure of the senders' physical postal addressed must be clear and conspicuous.
Also, answering Justice Department comments, the FTC said the new rule's statement of basis and purpose clarifies that the FTC "interprets provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act that direct the FTC to prescribe the mark to cover both visual images and written descriptions of sexually explicit conduct."
