The CAN-SPAM Act, passed in 2003, outlaws fraudulent e-mail and
requires marketers to include an unsubscribe option; but it
continues to allow legitimate, albeit unsolicited, commercial
e-mail.
The Act also directed the Federal Trade Commission to adopt a
rule requiring a mark or notice to be included in spam that
contains sexually oriented material. The purpose of the notice is
to inform recipients that a spam message contains sexually oriented
material and to make it easier to filter out messages they do not
wish to receive.
Establishing the mark was one of several actions Congress
directed the Commission to undertake by enacting the CAN-SPAM Act.
The CAN-SPAM Act required the Commission to prescribe the mark or
notice within 120 days after passage of the Act.
Finalised after a period of public consultation, the FTC's rule
requires the phrase "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: " to be included both in
the subject line of any e-mail message that contains sexually
oriented material, and in the electronic equivalent of a "brown
paper wrapper" in the body of the message.
This "brown paper wrapper" is what a recipient initially will
see when opening a message containing sexually oriented material.
The wrapper will include the prescribed mark or notice, certain
other specified information, and no other information or
images.
The rule excludes sexually oriented materials from the subject
line of a sexually explicit e-mail message. It also requires the
mandatory disclosure of the sender's "valid physical postal
address" to be "clear and conspicuous," like the other required
disclosures. Finally, it requires that the mark appear using
elements of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange
("ASCII") character set.
The requirement covers both visual images in e-mails and written
descriptions of sexually explicit conduct.
