Prohibition of online advertising in a list of e-mails: a misstep by the CJEU?
When submitted a request for a preliminary ruling, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is expect to answer questions—not raise too many new ones. Unfortunately, a judgment on online advertising appears to miss the mark in this respect.
On a free ad-supported e-mail service, users were shown adverts to support the service financially (a paying version was also available, without ads). While ads sometimes appear in banners or pop-up windows, the ads that were the subject of this particular case appeared in the list of e-mails, between e-mails received. The CJEU was asked to see whether this is spam.