Last week, I wrote about concerns with the Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA).
McCarthy Tetrault sent an alert message to its subscribers:
While the objective of the legislation is laudable, the bill’s overly broad language could circumscribe legitimate business-to-business marketing and impact software companies’ ability to deliver upgrades and patches to customers.
The article itself describes how Canada’s proposed legislation, as it currently stands, is more restrictive than other countries.
Unlike other international anti-spam legislation, the prohibition against unsolicited commercial messages in the ECPA is not limited to messages sent with some element of fraud or misleading information, sent with an “intent to deceive or mislead,” sent to addresses that were gathered using “automated means,” or sent in bulk.
The requirements for obtaining express consent are stringent and the circumstances in which an implied consent can be relied upon are limited.
Michael Geist wrote about the legislation on his blog and in his newspaper column this week, arguing that:
most of these provisions are standard fare around the world. All parties should recognize that providing reasonable consumer protections does not impede electronic commerce, but rather facilitate it.
The McCarthy Tetrault article disagrees with this assessment that a) the provisions are standard fare; and b) that these are reasonable consumer protections.
As an example, in a twist that seems to discourage increased e-commerce, businesses are not even permitted to seek consent electronically, because such a request itself would be a prohibited electronic message.
Are people not troubled by an attempt to impose limits on Canadians expressing legal communications? It is as though there is a presumption that all unsolicited messages – even those with legitimate expressions – are to be stopped.
Shouldn’t that concern more than the business community?
When we first looked at limiting the electronic distribution of content that is illegal in print form, there was a global reaction. The current draft of ECPA seeks to make it illegal to distribute content that is completely legal and has no intent to deceive. Where are the civil libertarians on this issue?
We’ll watch for changes to avoid Canada’s ECPA chilling e-commerce, rather than enhancing its adoption.