Messages from State Services with invitations to events are asked to be recognized as spam
[ad_1]
Emails with invitations to events sent to users of State Services may be considered illegal advertising. The reason for the trial was an invitation to the “Battle of Robots” championship, which is coordinated by the Ministry of Digital Development. Portal users were also notified about other projects. Now there is no universal approach to what is considered advertising, experts and lawyers admit. But if the court supports the plaintiff’s arguments, the ministry will have to modify “State Services”, “separating information and advertising.”
On March 6, the Moscow Arbitration Court will consider a claim against the Moscow FAS office to declare illegal the refusal to initiate a case for violations in the field of advertising. As explained to Kommersant by the plaintiff, head of the information and analytical service of the Information for All Organization, Evgeniy Altovsky, the service refused, following his complaint, to recognize the invitation to watch the “Battle of Robots” championship, sent by the Gosuslugi service to an e-mail, sent out without the consent of the recipient as an advertisement.
The operator of State Services is the Ministry of Digital Development. Mr. Altovsky asked to initiate a case for a violation under Art. 14.3 Code of Administrative Offences. The fine for legal entities under it is 100–500 thousand rubles. According to the plaintiff, the service referred to the fact that the email sent “does not contain information about the object of advertising and is informational.” The Ministry of Digital Development and the Moscow department of the FAS did not respond to Kommersant’s requests.
The plaintiff received the letter about the “Battle of the Robots”, on which the complaint was drawn up, in October 2023. In total, as Kommersant calculated, five letters from State Services were devoted to different stages of the last championship since April 2023, the sixth was received by email to a Kommersant correspondent on March 1. During 2023 and from the beginning of 2024, letters were received from the State Services address dedicated to other projects, for example, the RuStore application store, the Games of the Future championship, as well as offers to buy a ticket to the film “Challenge” (film company “Central Partnership” ) and download the collection of poems “Poetry of the Russian Summer” (Eksmo Publishing House). VK declined to comment to Kommersant; Eksmo and Central Partnership did not respond to requests.
The purpose of an advertising mailing, in accordance with the Law “On Advertising,” is to highlight an object and attract the attention of an indefinite circle of people to it, explains Yulia Dunaeva, legal consultant of the email mailing service DashaMail: “The advertising message should be generalized, non-personalized in nature – it is assumed that anyone can use the information face. Putting the subscriber’s name in the mailing list does not make the circle of people specific. It is also important that the letter contains links to the object of advertising or to the site where it can be purchased.” The information message in the mailing list, NMi Group clarified to Kommersant, “must relate to the activities of the sender and not draw attention to any product.”
“There is no universal approach that allows one to clearly classify this or that information as advertising,” admits Irina Akimova, partner in the competition law practice at BGP Litigation. The lawyer “does not see signs of advertising” in the message about the championship, “since it does not generate interest in a product or legal entity, but represents reference and informational information.” But Aleksey Kostovarov, partner at Liniya Prava Law Firm, considers the FAS’s position ambiguous: “Here it is hardly possible to talk about the nature of the message simply as informational: the message has individual attributes directly aimed at attracting the attention of the addressee.” At the same time, the lawyer adds, it is necessary to find out “whether this message was aimed at promoting the product on the market, taking into account the nature of the competition.”
At the moment, materials on “State Services” are not divided into informational and advertising, the portal itself is not an advertising platform, it is of a reference and informational nature, notes Irina Akimova. According to Alexey Kostovarov, if the court recognizes a message about the championship as an advertisement, the recipient’s prior consent will be required for its distribution. The Ministry of Digital Development, the expert believes, will have to refine the service, separating the areas of information and advertising.
[ad_2]
Source link
