FTC Defines Spam

The FTC has just issued its final report on how it will define Spam with regards to the federal CAN-SPAM act. According to the FTC, bulk e-mail is commercial if it includes advertising and promotion or if the subject line or beginning of the message would be reasonably considered to be advertising or promotion. This is very similar to the proposed rules that were announced back in August. The modified rules also deal with the issues of transactional messages (an e-mail regarding an order that also includes advertising) and relationship-based e-mail (messages about product updates, etc).