[kwlug-disc] KWLUG and CASL (and Mailman)

[Bob Jonkman]

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My take on this is: Messages on KWLUG don't meet the definition of a
"Commercial Electronic Message", so there is no need to keep track of
subscribers' consent or provide a snail-mail address.

Even messages that provide information about commercial products or
services don't necessarily meet the definition, because they're not
"promoting" one of the proscribed activities, only providing factual
information.  Of course, anybody who does promote their products or
services or land deals or gaming activities makes their message a
"Commercial Electronic Message". But then the origin is that sender,
not the KWLUG organization, so KWLUG should still be held harmless.

If KWLUG were to solicit donations, or charge membership fees, or
charge for tickets to meetings then perhaps it might be different.
Certainly organizations that *do* have membership fees may have
different compliance requirements (attn: Kwartzlab folks)

- --Bob, who is not a lawyer and does not offer legal advice.


On 14-06-18 01:45 PM, Paul Nijjar wrote:
> 
> My feeling is that the Canadian anti-spam legislation does not 
> apply to KWLUG mailing lists, but I do not know this for sure.
> 
> Background: http://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/home
> 
> Some thoughts:
> 
> KWLUG has two mailing lists of note: kwlug-announce and
> kwlug-disc. The only commercial solicitations on these lists that I
> can think of are:
> 
> - People offering to sell things on kwlug-disc - Information about 
> the FLOSS Fund
> 
> I believe that almost everybody on kwlug-announce has consented to
>  being on the list: - Many people signed up during our meetings - 
> Some people subscribed on their own - A few people gave verbal 
> consent to be on the list (and then we subscribed them)
> 
> The problem is that we do not have paperwork to explicitly track 
> how people got on the list.
> 
> A similar situation exists for kwlug-disc, except that there are 
> very few people who were signed up during meetings.
> 
> I do not think I should be too concerned about this, but maybe I 
> should be. KWLUG does not actually exist in the eyes of the 
> government; we are not registered as a nonprofit or a business or 
> anything else. So it is not clear who gets sued/arrested if some 
> proprietary software troublemaker raises a stink about getting 
> KWLUG emails.
> 
> One oddity about the legislation is that organizations are
> supposed to put snailmail addresses in their messages. We don't
> have a snailmail address, so unless a member wants to handle this I
> do not know what to do.
> 
> I am thinking I should probably make mention of CASL in the next 
> kwlug-announce message, but I am not that enthusiastic about 
> purging the list and starting again.
> 
> One of the confounding factors is that Mailman sucks for complying
>  with this legislation. As far as I know, it does not have good
> ways to track when and how people are subscribed. Its unsubscribe 
> functionality also sucks. Thus people are going to proprietary 
> solutions like Mailchimp which rewrite all links in a message with
>  tracking information.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> - Paul
> 
> 
> -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ kwlug-disc mailing 
> list kwlug-disc at kwlug.org 
> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
> 
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