As part of a court case, last week saw the decision by a US court that falsifying data used in whois records is illegal according to the CAN-SPAM act, and can lead to up to three months in prison (!) – something which has fairly far-reaching implications on many in the email marketing industry. Here’s a few posts discussing the case, the law, and how it could affect you:

• 9th Circuit decision in US v. Kilbride – including a PDF with the full text of the decision
• Use Private Domain Registration and Go to Jail? – read: don’t use private registration services
• Why are you hiding? What are you hiding? – Neil Schartzmann of Return Path weighs in
• Court Rules That Using Domain Registration Privacy Services Represents ‘Material Falsification’ – from TechDirt’s that-doesn’t-seem-right dept
• UK Email Marketing Legislation Update – related legal information for UK email marketers

In other legal news, Tagged.com (the world’s “third largest social network” that I’d never heard of…) settled after New York and Texas threatened to sue. Ordered to pay fines totalling $700,000, they remained adamant that they ain’t done nuthin’ wrong – claiming that they were merely using the same features other social networking sites do. Quite a few sites around the net chimed in on this one, making it what I would guess is the largest story about Tagged.com to date. Who says there’s no such thing as bad publicity?

Special mention this week goes once again to Neil Schwartzmann (already mentioned for his post at Return Path) for a followup to his earlier story about SPAMFighter.com’s bad handling of his registration and subsequent request to be unlisted from their database. Apparently the “SPAMFighter supremo” Henrik Soerensen finally came to his senses and posted a proper apology for the situation, consuming the appropriate amount of humble pie. Props to Neil for getting them to come round, and kudos to Henrik for dealing with things in the way he did (… eventually).