Court Says Porn Company Not Responsible For Spam Sent By Affiliates

from the no-inducement dept

A court has now ruled that Impulse Media is not guilty of spamming because some of its affiliates spammed people. The company, which provides "adult content" has an affiliate program to drive traffic to its site. Some of the people in the affiliate program (not surprisingly) sent out a bunch of spam using their affiliate codes. The government charged that this was Impulse Media's fault. Impulse Media's response was that it forbade spamming in its terms of service and kicked anyone caught spamming out of the program. The government responded that affiliates weren't required to read the terms and anyone kicked out could quickly sign right back up again. However, that wasn't enough to convince the government who found no clear liability for the company. This is a bit of a fine line, but it seems like the correct decision. The government absolutely could have (and probably should have) gone after the affiliates who did spam -- but chose to focus on the wrong company here.

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