DD Support Board and Research Team

[Michael-Goode]

This seems like a good explanation:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/31497.asp

ey differences between the federal CAN-Spam law and California spam law
Everyday companies that are doing online marketing will really need to be careful about sending their email campaigns only if they're compliant with both state law and federal law.

It takes a lot more than complying with the CAN-Spam Act if you want to be in full adherence with the various state-wide spam laws that are out there. In fact, part of the reason why the federal CAN-Spam Act was passed was merely to serve as a general standard and point of reference that's enforceable on a country-wide scale, because of the variances in state laws.

Which law rules then, you may ask?

Here's how it works:

Whenever spam complaints make it to court, the burden is on the sender of the email to show that everything they did was correct, in this case demonstrating not only compliance with California law, but U.S. federal law as well.

Further considerations for sending email to and within California
California State has long been known to enact statutes that are more stringent, more limiting, and more particular than the CAN-Spam national standard.

For instance, one of the major general differences is that CAN-Spam requires there to be an opt-out mechanism in every email and that the advertisers comply with opt-out requests within 10 business days. But in California, there is no demand for an opt-out mechanism, nor is there any rule that the recipient must actually opt-out.

This means that if somebody receives a commercial email that they didn't sign up for, they don't have to request to be removed from the sender's list. In fact, the recipient is free to wait and collect loads of emails, and then later sue the sender for a tidy sum of $1,000 per email.

So if you're an active bulk email marketer, these penalties can add up very quickly indeed.


Read more at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/31497.asp#yf3FMShXGzwLJhOT.99