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ARTICLE · 25 OCTOBER 2014

Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation: An Advantage For Cloud Computing?

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The communications provisions of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) came into force on July 1, 2014.

CanadaPrivacy
J. Sébastien Gittens
J. Sébastien Gittens
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The communications provisions of Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) came into force on July 1, 2014. Generally speaking, CASL prohibits a person from sending a "commercial electronic message" without the consent of the recipient.

On January 15, 2015, further prohibitions relating to the installation of computer programs will come into force. Considerable uncertainty remains with respect to the application of these provisions. We expect that CASL will impose significant compliance hurdles for traditional software providers due to its regulation of programs "installed" on a computer system. Because it does not appear to regulate software-as-a-service to the same extent, CASL may favour cloud-computing products and catalyze the expanded adoption of cloud computing in Canada.

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