Internet marketing - privacy regulations

Internet marketing legal issues
Privacy regulations

Bob Kemper discusses several important factors to be considered by high-end internet based marketing startups, including the continuing stream of Federal and state legislative and regulatory activity.  My concern and focus has little in common with any startup internet business that involves debt or other overhead, which is Kemper's target audience.  But even a base-zero bootstrap internet business has to comply with many, if not all, of the same laws and regulations that apply to the big dogs.

Especially important among those laws that any internet business must observe are the regulatory requirements for preserving confidentiality of personal identifying information.

The best place to start learning the cyber law issues that internet entrepreneurs must face, whether start-up or established, are the major statutory provisions that have come into being over the last ten years.  Reading statutes is rarely regarded as either fun or easy, but it at least has the virtue of being authoritative.

Those primary legal sources are these:

• Federal: Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) — 18 USC § 2510, et seq. at Cornell Law
• Federal: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) — 15 U.S.C. 6501, et seq. at Cornell Law
• Federal: USA Patriot Act of 2001 — HR 3162
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as amended
• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – Amendments Act of 2008

The various states have also been busy enacting an assortment of general privacy and specifically cyber-related legislation, and more legislation is undoubtedly on the way. That's what legislators do. The significance of any particular law or regulation depends largely upon the nature of the internet business. Privacy concerns ought to be at the top of any list that involves the collection of customer data.

Also: Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
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