Epic Advertising Wins Spam Suit
ADOTAS – Epic Advertising confirmed today that a federal district court in San Francisco recently ruled that the company was not responsible for violating the Can-Spam Act of 2003.
Internet service provider ASIS alleged that Epic was responsible for thousands of unsolicited, misleading e-mails sent to consumers, but the judge in the case – U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero – found that the company (formerly known as AzoogleAds) did not knowingly send the e-mails. The missives were sent through an affiliate, Seamless Media, which had allegedly obtained the addresses through a third party, which had received them from a spammer.
ASIS plans to appeal the decision.
Epic says they’re happy with Spero’s ruling.
“The best safety is really to have the appropriate internal compliance measures buttoned up, which we began in 2005 and have been improving ever since,” Don Mathis, president of Epic Advertising, told ADOTAS. “Our opinion on this ruling is that compliance and ethical operating practices count. If we didn’t focus as much time, effort and money on our integrity assurance processes as we do, I am not sure the decision would have been so favorable for us.”
Mathis added that Epic currently spends about 5% of its revenue on compliance, and plans to continue to do so.
“The decision doesn’t change our practices, since we believe we set a standard for internal compliance already. I think the message here is, if you do this business the right way, with a demonstrable commitment to ethical business practices, you won’t be held accountable to an unreasonable standard in the case of affiliate activities. But you had better be able to show that you do, in fact, take all of the commercially reasonable steps to manage your compliance processes. We spend about 5% of revenues on compliance, and I can’t imagine doing it well at any less cost than that. We’re talking a real outlay of millions of dollars a year.”
Last year, then-Azoogle settled with the Florida Attorney General for $1 million over online lead-generation practices.
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