As I work through the list of hip hop marketers who have been sp@mming me at various email addresses, intentionally or not, I may have burned some bridges in the process. Sorry if I've been overly harsh with people who were willing to respond once I found the right email but you guys all set yourselves up for that by not only violating web etiquette but by violating Federal law.

I'm realizing that a lot of people aren't aware that they're violating the CAN-SPAM act on a regular basis that, according to the FTC's Compliance Guide for Business, can carry "penalties of up to $16,000" for "each separate email in violation."  By the way, if you hire someone who violates the law publicizing your business or product, you're potentially liable as well.

Here are some key points from the FTC's guide covering "all commercial messages" including, "for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line." I hope this will help folks clean up their act before the FTC gets around to monitoring hip hop marketers or responding to complaints from your competition who can clean up their act and then proceed to take you out of the game:

"Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement."

"Tell recipients where you're located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you've registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you've registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations."

"Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that's easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn't block these opt-out requests."

"Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can't contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible."

There's lots more on their site. If it confuses you and you can't afford legal counsel, look to local business associations such as SCORE for help, though you may get mixed results based on the experiences of some of my friends. You may also be able to get additional info from the FTC's toll-free line 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) as well as from their site linked above.

Evaluate what you're doing before you get totally f*cked.  It would suck to be taken out of the game over such an easy thing to remedy.

By the way, that's why all my newsletters require you to opt-in and I don't add any email addresses to my newsletter lists by hand.  And that's why I would never use a blast service that doesn't offer easy opt-out.  In fact, you would do well to ask how such services implement the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act before using them.  As far as I can tell, most email blasters are in violation and their day will come, mark my words.

Note: If you're sending on-topic material to hiphoppress(at)netweed(dot)com, I'm not concerned about these issues in relationship to your mailings.  That's why I created it.  However, if you're using any of my other addresses, all bets are off.

Related ProHipHop Coverage:
ProHipHop & Hip Hop Press Banned List Soon to be Posted Publicly
[For Use by Other Sp@mmers, lol!]