SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: Not really… how’s FTC-EXPLICIT?

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has announced that it has reached a settlement with an adult website operation that used third-party affiliates to send spam to consumers with deceptive subject lines like “Payment declined.” The body of the e-mails contained sexually explicit advetisements for Sobonito Investments, Ltd.’s website. The agreement requires that Sobonito comply the CAN-SPAM Act, which forbids deceptive subject lines in advertisements and requires that adult content be labeled “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:” in the subject line.

The settlement agreement can be read here. The FTC’s press release can be read here. A post by Prof. Eric Goldman on the agreement can be read here.

The FCC: The Agency that Fined Me?

Reuters reports that the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) will rule that the motion picture “Saving Private Ryan” is not indecent. The FCC had received several complaints about networks airing the film since the film contains violence and adult language. On Monday, the FCC also rejected complaints lodged against the “Simpsons,” “Friends,” and broadcasts of the film “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Under federal law, the FCC can regulate what is distributed over broadcast television and the Commission has been increasingly active in regulating content since Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime show during last year’s Super Bowl. This latest batch of rulings may be a sign that the Commission will ease up on policing morality now that the agency will be under new leadership.

For all of you blog junkies, here are three more goodies

Eric Goldman, a professor at the Marquette University Law School, has started a blog called the Technology & Marketing Law Blog that, although only days old, looks like it will run the gambit of intellectual property and technology legal issues. I learned about this blog from the Trademark Blog, which is written by Martin Schwimmer. The Trademark Blog is one of the leading blogs in the trademark field and I visit it almost daily along with John Welch’s TTABlog, which covers the United States Patent and Trademark Office‘s primary appellate body for trademark registrations and disputes, the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board. All three of these blogs are invaluable resources for news and information important for advertising lawyers, although the two trademark blogs may be too trademark specific to be of practical value to marketing or business readers of this blog.