Posted by Virus Bulletin on Mar 6, 2015
First success story for long-awaited CASL.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the agency responsible for enforcing Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) has issued a $1.1m dollar fine to Compu-Finder, a Morin-Heights, Quebec-based firm, for violating the law.
Anti-spam legislation plays an important if usually fairly invisible role in the fight against spam. It might not help much against the majority of spammers, who are breaking the law in various other ways anyway (for instance by using botnets, or selling illegal goods), but it does stop legitimate companies from making the situation far worse.
Canada was relatively late to the party when it came to anti-spam legislation, but the CASL has been praised by many in the anti-spam community. Not only is it much stricter than the US equivalent, but many also expect it to have implications for email senders in the United States, almost all of whom have clients north of the border as well.
Writing about the CASL for Virus Bulletin in March 2011, John Levine, one of the people who was involved in the development of the law, wrote:
Although Canadian law clearly does not apply in the US, the economies of the two countries are so intertwined that all but the smallest US companies do business in Canada. Their internets are equally intertwined.
More on the fine against Compu-Finder can be found at CAUCE here. Details on the CASL itself, including helpful advice on how to comply with the law, can be found here.
Posted on 06 March 2015 by Martijn Grooten
