In April, the FTC adopted a rule that requires spam which contains sexually oriented material to include the warning "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" in the subject line. That rule went into effect on Wednesday. In addition to the subject label, the rule mandates an "electronic brown paper wrapper" that prohibits sexually oriented material from residing in the "initially viewable area" of the email message. The rule changes were meant to clearly identify sexually explicit material a user may not want to view and to prevent porn images from being seen immediately if a user inadvertently opens such an email. To see such material, the email must be formatted so the user must initiate action (such as clicking a link or scrolling down) to view the content. Violators could be subject to jail time and/or fines up to US$500,000.

That is how the rule supposed to work, but has anyone complied? Since the time the rule went into effect, I personally have only seen one (out of about 50) sexually explicit emails that made an attempt to comply with the new rule. Ironically, the email came from OptInRealBig.com, a company who has been on the receiving end of a spam lawsuit, and recently tried to get a restraining order placed against SpamCop. While the email did have the requisite "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:" label in the subject header, it fell short on the other requirements of the rule. The email did not contain a brown paper wrapper and showed sexually oriented images within the initially viewable area. The email did have an opt-out link, and address of the sender, but that information was at the bottom of the email, and not within the brown paper wrapper area the rule requires.

Will this new rule help rid inboxes of unwanted sexually explicit spam? It is doubtful. One of the arguments of the Can-Spam act is that it does nothing to reduce the amount of spam, only make the spam that is sent legal. This new rule does the same. Yes it may help in creating inbox rules to shuffle the spam off to the deleted items folder, but it does nothing to help curb the amount received (unless the spammers run afoul of the law and are shut down). The people who will adopt the rules will be in the minority, mainly because the majority of spam (sexually explicit or not) comes from outside of the United States and are out of the reach of the law. Luckily, there are legislators who recognize the Can-Spam act has had little effect on the spam problem and are urging the FTC to clamp down on the businesses who are using spammers to solicit their wares.