The Federal Trade Commission today stated that the FTC and the U.S. Justice Department have settled with TJ Web Productions LLC, the parent company of adult affiliate program AdultPaymaster. The agreement, which occurred in June, is related to a suit that claimed the Nevada-based company violated the FTC's Adult Labeling Rule and the CAN-SPAM Act by employing affiliates to send sexually explicit commercial emails on its behalf.
Under the proposed settlement, TJ Web is prohibited permanently from violating the FTC's Adult Labeling Rule, which stipulates that commercial emailers of sexually explicit material must "warn" email recipients of the content by placing the words "sexually explicit" in the subject line, and that the initially viewable area of the message does not contain graphic sexual images. Additionally, commercial emailers must give consumers the opportunity to opt out of receiving future emails and provide a physical postal address.
The settlement also stipulates that TJ Web must obtain agreement from prospective affiliates to comply with the terms of the court order or risk being dropped from the adult webmaster affiliate program and forfeiture of payment.
"TJ Web is as much a victim of this as the recipients of the spam are," said the company's attorney, Clyde DeWitt. "They not only didn't send any spam, they have a policy against it. The problem was, nobody could produce a magic bullet to stop affiliates from sending spam."
Since its crackdown on affiliate programs that have been targeted for allegedly violating the CAN-SPAM Act, the FTC so far has collected more than $1.6 million from five adult affiliate program owners (out of seven charged) who have settled, according to a press release. TJ Web's settlement included a $465,000 civil penalty, the commission stated.
Kathee Brewer contributed to this article.
