Negative Option Marketing Faces New Legal Challenges

摘要

Just as marketers have begun to adjust to the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) rigorous and expansive enforcement of the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA), new efforts to regulate negative option marketing techniques have emerged that would impose even more burdensome requirements on these techniques. Last month, a new bill was introduced in Congress - the "Unsubscribe Act of 2017" - which is designed to provide "increased consumer protection with respect to negative option agreements." The bill contains several provisions that would be challenging for marketers to comply with. While ROSCA already requires that there be a "simple" method of cancellation, this bill goes further, requiring - for all online negative option transactions - that the consumer be allowed to cancel "by the same means and in the same manner" as the consumer entered into the transaction.