In July of 2012 I wrote an
entry for this blog discussing Canada's pending anti-spam
legislation. On January 5, 2013 Industry Canada
released a revised set of proposed regulations to the
legislation, titled the Electronic Commerce Protection
Regulations. There is a 30 day period for any comments to
be submitted to Industry Canada.
Some of the proposed provisions are a restatement from prior
drafts of the regulations, but Industry Canada has responded to
previous submissions by expanding and clarifying some of the
exemptions to the broadly-stated message prohibitions in the
anti-spam legislation. Of particular note are the following
items.
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP
Consent will not be required to send a message if the parties
have a "family relationship" or "personal
relationship". The proposed regulations define both
these terms, and would now expand the concept of "personal
relationship" to be a subjective test involving prior
voluntary, two-way
