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).

Much time has been spent discussing the subject of user engagement lately as it becomes more and more obvious how much of a key role it plays in the current email marketing landscape. For your edification – a few recent related posts from the blogging world:

• Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? – George Bilbery from Return Path weighs in
• How to attract customers, engage them & keep them coming back – backyard birding as a study in user engagement
• Email Marketing Today: Episode 29 – “Lessons learned from WWD New Rules of Consumer Engagement”
• How Engagement Metrics Influence Deliverability – key points
• User Engagement & Email Delivery – a few quick notes
• Using Personality To Help Drive Engagement – why it’s important to show you’re not a faceless corporation
• Future of deliverability: 1 – the role of user interaction (see also part 2)
• How Can Non-Profits Send More Engaging Email? – a new study with some interesting statistics

Twitter have in the past week or two made several important changes that I think are worth mentioning, particularly because of the launch of our new Share section. One thing that I noticed this morning (being one of the lucky 5% of users getting a sneak preview) was the new ability to set up lists (apologies for the link to a slightly out-of-date post, but there’s no more recent information available that I know of, yet) – which for me is a very cool feature I have long wished for. Our own Mr Gareth Langston will be posting more about this later, so I’ll leave the details for him to describe.

Also, as many people are aware, Twitter searches will soon be incorporated into Google search results. What hasn’t been as widely discussed is Microsoft already have a Twitter search up and running – at least for part of the world (NB: I finally got it working by tweaking the URL). Finally, on a technical note, they’ve also introduced support for API versioning, which will allow the introduction of new features more easily than previously, and makes my developer side a happy little geek.

Special mention this week to Marketing Sherpa‘s recently announced 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. It’s not free ($297 for the PDF-only version), but to whet your appetite there is a fairly large executive summary slash excerpt available (16 pages, including several pages for the index). The report itself contains research from 1,493 “real-life marketers” with a plethora of charts, tables, statistics, and advice totalling 283 pages of content: quite honestly the most comprehensive research on email marketing that I know of, especially when complemented by our very own UK email marketing benchmark report. Good stuff, Sherpa!

Deliverability: often misunderstood, despite being important to everyone engaging in email marketing. Here are a few articles covering the topic that might provide a degree of enlightenment:

• Why poor email deliverability is your own fault – and what you can do about it
• Deliverability Emergencies from the ISP Side of the Desk – a reality check
• Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? – or is it simply a new way of looking at things?
• Rescuing reputation – many small steps
• Email deliverability: what’s it all about? – detailed basic information

This week saw the announcement of the new Composite Snow-Show (CSS) blacklist from Spamhaus, which aims to work around the problem of widely spread, low-use IP addresses which are used for spamming. Naturally, this was covered by the usual suspects around the blogosphere, with a nice overview from the excellent Word to the Wise. On a related note (and just possibly prompted by news from Spamhaus), Return Path also announced the latest version of their Reputation Network Blacklist, which they describe as a real-time list of senders categorized as the “worst of the worst”. In a quick return to our litigious friends over in America, (and as the third link to a post by “laura” this week!) I’d like to point to a hilarious argument-turned-ugly at the DMA. Lawyers, on your marks! Lastly, special mention this week to an article over on MediaPosts‘s Email Insider that I have to confess was very enlightening for me: My Name Is Loren. BTW, I’m A ‘He’. Steve Knigge’s note in the comments also made me laugh.