News has reached us that five pornography companies have been fined a total of $1.6 million for sending spam which did not include a warning indicating they included sexually explicit content.
Under US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules, spammers must include the warning 'SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT' in the subject lines of their pornographic emails or face fines. Spammers who do not clearly label their sexually orientated messages are in violation of federal law.
Florida-based BangBros Inc. and APC Entertainment Inc. have agreed to pay $650,000 and $220,000 in fines respectively, MD Media of Michigan have been fined $238,743. Two other companies, Pure Marketing Solutions and Internet Matrix Technology, will pay $50,000 to settle the charges against them.
According to the FTC, the companies have also agreed to allow their operations to be monitored to ensure they comply with the law in future. It has been reported that the companies investigated did not actually send out the messages, but are still liable because they hired third parties to do so on their behalf.
Lydia Parnes, of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC said,
"This x-rated e-mail is electronic flashing. It exposes kids and other unwary consumers to graphic sexual content, and it is unwanted, offensive, and illegal. The Adult Labeling Rule was designed to protect consumers who don't want to be exposed to random assaults of sexual material and others, like kids, for whom it is inappropriate. It's the law, and we intend to enforce it."
The FTC's rules follow the controversial CAN-SPAM Act and are designed to protect email recipients from being unwittingly exposed to unwanted sexual images in spam messages. The FTC has also declared that spam messages should not contain sexual images, but can include links to sites which do contain adult content.
The FTC ruling about stamping sexually explicit spam came into effect from May 2004.
NOTE: Due to the adult nature of the companies and web sites involved, this article purposefully does not provide hyperlinks to the respective web sites.
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