Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation and a option to help protect one's business

So, along with it being Canada's 147th Birthday this July 1st, today also marks the activation of protocol and legislation that have been designed to help protect the Canadian Public from Electronically Delivered Commercial Messages (or as the legislation calls them ECM's, but to the average lay-person in short SPAM)

This new set of protocols actually places some hefty fines on the sending of email that can be considered Commercial in nature, but has been designed with aspects which are meant to keep regular email between family and friends out of hairs of being a problem.

With charges for violations ranging from $1 Million to $10 Million per violation (depending on how your business is set up) the onus has been put on the person sending the communication to prove that they have either explicit or implied consent to email the other party.

This actually brings up a rather interesting question of how does one make sure they have this consent in a way that can be proven should it ever come down to it? Online this is fairly easy as a small business can actually have their clients opt-in to a database structured system which will date the details of when and where authorization for a specific email address is given.

With face to face contact however this becomes a bit tougher to validate, as a contact can give you their business card, and later state that they did not give consent for ECM's, leaving it to the sender to prove otherwise.

So how does a small business protect themselves in this aspect? sure, if the request comes in via your Website and a Newsletter subscription system details like the Email Address, Time, Date and even a computer's Internet Address (their IP) can all be cataloged, but in person that is not quite as easy...not through Technology that is.

The answer for inertial Zen Designs is employing for this situation is that the standing policy for "First Contact" in person will be to carry a small day planner, specifically designed to allow for business cards and notes to be placed on the same planner page, with Me. 

Each page in this day planner will look like the image below and at the time of accepting a potential Business contact's card it will mean asking them to sign their name and approval of consent to the page that also will house their Professional Business card.  Yes this is an inconvenience that will lead to first contact taking a bit longer to complete, but it is something that I think is a rather forward thinking proactive way of managing communications with clients.

Do you have any ideas of how you would protect your business in a situation like this, or thoughts of the new Legislation in general, if so feel free to leave comments.