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GTALUG infrastructure (the server).
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Migrate the subscribers from the old announce list #17

Closed myles closed 9 years ago

myles commented 9 years ago
myles commented 9 years ago

From Gordon C. on the tlug-board mailing list:

Not sure if this answers the question, but I found this at http://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/00304.html#q14:

I represent a member-based not-for-profit organization; do I have the same obligations under the new law as a commercial business?

Yes, you have the same obligations, but the Act provides a special type of implied consent for these types of organizations. If you are a club, association or voluntary organization and the recipient is one of your members, you have implied consent (existing non-business relationship) as long as the individual remains a member and for two years after the end of his/her membership.

And also this:

I'm a not-for-profit organization; does CASL apply to me?

CASL does not apply to non-commercial activity. Insofar as not-for-profit organizations do not engage in commercial activity, CASL won't apply. This means that messages sent by not-for-profit organizations that strictly seek a donation, ask for volunteers or invite neighbours to a free community event are not covered under the scope of the Act.

CASL will apply to not-for-profit organizations sending commercial electronic messages, which are essentially messages that advertise, market or promote a product, good or service or messages that solicit participation in a commercial activity.

There are also instances where implied consent to send commercial electronic messages is provided for not-for-profit organizations when sending to members of the organization.

The question, I suppose, is who among the umpteen people on the mailing lists can be called "members"?

As I get the chance, I'll see if I can find something a bit closer to the question.

cbbrowne commented 9 years ago

Seems to me that what we have is several steps orthogonal to CASL...

  1. Our lists consist mostly of NON members of the organization. We have roughly 20 members and a whole lot more subscribers than that. And we don't generally evaluate membership as a criteria for joining mailing lists, so we're on shaky ground in using the "members" aspect as any sort of protection.
  2. On the other hand, CASL "does not apply to non-commercial activity", and that's broadly normally the case for us.

It gives us good reason to put teeth into enforcement of "please don't spam our list" rules; if we do that, then, despite #1 being not terribly applicable, we should be pretty safe, right???

  1. For a dose of "WTF", consider that the list of existing subscribers has a lot of entries that most likely predate the existence of "GTALUG the Corporate Entity", so for "GTALUG the Corporate Entity" to take the list is a wee bit weird; it's taking someone else's list over. I'm not quite sure where legalities lie, there; it's worth keeping the takeover in mind.
davecb commented 9 years ago

We're a non-profit not proposing business relationships, so we're over on the non-bad side of the law*, but I'd suggest that if we invite people to subscribe by replying, we'd be an example of "good behaviour".

--dave

On 08/05/2014 02:58 PM, Christopher Browne wrote:

Seems to me that what we have is several steps orthogonal to CASL...

1.

Our lists consist mostly of NON members of the organization. We
have roughly 20 members and a whole lot more subscribers than
that. And we don't generally evaluate membership as a criteria for
joining mailing lists, so we're on shaky ground in using the
"members" aspect as any sort of protection.

2.

On the other hand, CASL "does not apply to non-commercial
activity", and that's broadly normally the case for us.

It gives us good reason to put teeth into enforcement of "please don't spam our list" rules; if we do that, then, despite #1 https://github.com/gtalug/infrastructure/issues/1 being not terribly applicable, we should be pretty safe, right???

  1. For a dose of "WTF", consider that the list of existing subscribers has a lot of entries that most likely predate the existence of "GTALUG the Corporate Entity", so for "GTALUG the Corporate Entity" to take the list is a wee bit weird; it's taking someone else's list over. I'm not quite sure where legalities lie, there; it's worth keeping the takeover in mind.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/gtalug/infrastructure/issues/17#issuecomment-51243245.

David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain

myles commented 9 years ago

Do to the CASL and trying to be an example of good behaviour, we aren't going to do this.