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).

Subject lines are the first thing seen by someone when they open their inbox, and as such are one of the most important elements of any email campaign – possibly the single most influential part of any email. Here’s some pointers on how to get it just right:

• Who needs Subject Lines…? – a clever strategy from Southwest Airlines
• Straight Talk on Subject Lines – four essential points to note
• Thoughts on email subject lines – what’s compelling – and why?
• Email Marketing Minute – “Subject Line Special Characters”
• Subject lines: Amazon’s lessons on discounts and frontloading – stats, analysis, and conclusions
• 7 fixes for terrible subject lines – dos and don’ts from iMediaConnection.com

The Wall Street Journal posted an article this week with the title “Why Email No Longer Rules… And what that means for the way we communicate“¹. In all honesty, this is — as you may have predicted — not true; at least as discussed by many of the prominent bloggers out there. This isn’t the first time the death of email has been predicted, and I’m certain it won’t be the last.

This week’s special mention goes to a post by Neil Schwartzman, Spamfighter.com are Spammers (reached via laura on Word to the Wise). An interesting tale of how not to deal with customers – made even more wince-worthy by the comments from the CEO of SPAMfighter.com below the post.

¹ This may be a little geeky, but can I say, what the hell is up with WSJ’s URLs? Ye gods, people, this isn’t 1995! How are we supposed to take advice on the latest forefronts of technology from a company that can’t even translate SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html into something a little more friendly?