Fighting Spam And Spyware Canadian Style — Part I

Canada recently enacted an anti-spam law that is likely to be effective in late summer/early fall of 2011, but it is very different from what other countries have done.

In addition to addressing what most Internet users would characterize as spam (namely unsolicited mass e-mail), the new Canadian legislation covers just about any form of "commercial electronic message" where the sender has not received the recipient's express or implied consent. That's right — it's very broad indeed.

The expansive nature of this law can be best understood in contrast to the anti-spam legislation of other countries. All these rules are aimed at preventing unwanted e-mail (and the extra costs and risks they present), but the international legislation typically requires a degree of fraud or misinformation before making it illegal — whereas the Canadian law does not have such limitations. Thus, it is well worth drilling down into the new law, because it applies to virtually every