Brendan is a long term spammer, who used to be in the US and moved to New Zealand in 2006. His presence in Auckland was noticed by Computerworld when a number of editors and staffers were spammed. When contacted by the paper, Brendan denied being involved in the spam and denied being the same Brendan Battles.

New Zealand anti-spam law went into effect in September 2007. The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 prohibits any unsolicited commercial email messages with a New Zealand connection, defined as messages sent to, from or within New Zealand. It also prohibits address harvesting.

The Internal Affairs department also appears to be investigating companies that purchased services from Brendan Battles.

Internal Affairs was still investigating businesses that had bought and used IMG databases some of which had been fined for breaching the act. Senior investigator Toni Demetriou said the sender of any commercial electronic message must have the consent of the recipient before the message was sent. stuff.co.nz

Poor Brandon. He moves to a country with no anti-spam law and then a year later they enact a law prohibiting any unsolicited email marketing.

Today the Canadian anti spam law received royal assent and is now law. ReturnPath is saying it will take effect September 2011, but that’s the only date I’ve seen published. The full text of the bill as passed by the House of Commons can be found at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/content/hoc/Bills/403/Government/C-28/C-28_3/C-28_3.PDF

It’s fairly dense and I’m still reading through the final version. Of critical importance for anyone marketing in Canada is that it sets requirements that commercial email be sent with the permission of the recipient. This is different from CAN SPAM here in the US which doesn’t require consent of the recipient, but allows anyone to send unsolicited email as long as it meets the standards set by the law.

CBC Story

Return Path blog post

CAUCE posts

Thin Data implementation guide

HT: Box of Meat

The Attorney General has decided not to enforce the law as it stands. The law does contain private right of action, so there may be private suits filed against companies.

I can’t necessarily fault the state senator who drafted the legislation for her intentions.

The law was drafted by Maine state senator Elizabeth Schneider, who said that she tried to align the legislation in accordance with COPPA. She wanted to expand protection for minors after she attended a national conference on prescription drugs and was shocked to learn about some of the techniques companies use to mine information from adolescents, including giving away toys and iPods in exchange for filling out surveys.

She attributes the bill’s problems to the fact that no one showed up to the public hearing about it, where problematic portions could have been discussed and reworded. “I believed that room would be filled with people in opposition to the bill,” she said. “Nobody turned out in opposition to the legislation.”

Good intentions with the bill, protecting minors from predatory marketers. Whether or not the blame is actually on the people who failed to oppose the bill is not nearly as obvious to me.

HT: @ddayman
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Don’t forget to participate in the DKIM implementation survey. For ESPs. For ISPs. Check back next week for results.

Here is hoping that the new legislation that Sen. Schneider plans to craft during the next legislative session actually accomplishes her goals.

“That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face,” the ruling concludes, “because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United State Constitution.”

Mickey has the full text of the ruling up. Ed Falk has some commentary up.