Ultimate Legal Breakdown of Internet Law & the Subscription Business Model [e300‪]‬ Legally Sound Smart Business by Pasha Law PC

In this podcast episode, Matt and Nasir breakdown the legal issues of the subscription industry's business on the internet.







Resources







A good 50-state survey for data breach notifications as of July 2018.California Auto-Renewal Law (July 2018)Privacy Policies Law by StateWhy Users of Ashley Madison May Not Sue for Data Breach [e210]Ultimate Legal Breakdown: Subscription Box Businesses [e286]How Subscription Model Pricing Is The Gift And The Curse [e228]Guide to Terms & Conditions for Subscription Box Businesses (January 2015)GDPR v. CCPANegative Options according to the FTC from 2009Negative Options according to the FTC from 2016







Full Podcast Transcript



NASIR: Welcome to our podcast! My name is Nasir Pasha.



MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law – practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.



NASIR: This is where we cover business in the news and give our legal twist to that news. Today, we are going to really focus on a subscription industry. Pretty much every service product now you can get on a subscription basis. We’re going to do the ultimate legal breakdown on privacy, data protection, and terms and conditions. If you really love the law, this is for you because we’re going to bore you to death.



MATT: Like you said, when people think of subscription-based things, I think – at least for me – the first thing that comes to mind is the subscription box model where you get an actual delivery of goods every month, but it’s way more than that. I can imagine there’s one listener who doesn’t have at least one subscription-based service – like Netflix or anything like that or an Amazon account. It’s very prevalent and it’s pretty wide-reaching at this point. It’s just there’s a lot of rules that go into it, especially depending on where you’re located as well and where your customers are. We’re not going to be able to cover everything, but we’re hoping to cover as much as we can.



NASIR: No, we’re covering everything. We’re going to be here for the next three days, nonstop, just buckle your seatbelts. The subscription model is nothing new. I don’t know how far back you’d go, but you could go back to at least newspapers and periodicals. I think where you can start seeing the kind of subscription box kind of related aspect is – what was that back in the day where you’d pay X amount?



MATT: Columbia House?



NASIR: Yeah, exactly. That seems to be where things really started to transition into something a little bit more clever when it comes to certain products being mailed to you on a monthly basis.



MATT: Yeah, we’ll get into that as well. There was a little bit of trickery involved in that, but that’s definitely one of the earlier adopters. Like you said, newspapers, that’s what I said at the beginning. It’s something that people might associate with one thing, but it’s really across the industry – pretty far-reaching in terms of different services in addition to the goods.



NASIR: But I think one thing that has changed – I mean, we just have to say it plainly – it’s the internet. When someone would walk into your store, you would have an interaction with that customer. Even if you had all the legal protections and things like that, it was just different because it was face-to-face. If there was an issue with the product or service, there was that human interaction. Now, on the internet, the stakes are just so much higher because, first of all, there’s this wall of a computer in front of you, so all your customers feel protected. Frankly, even businesses feel protected to be a little bit more flexible with how they do things. And so, if someone has a complaint and they’re upset about it, they’re going to blast you online. It’s very easy now. Any marketing material, once you put it up,