The UK is enacting consumer protection regulations (eff. May 26) that will criminalize certain marketing practices that are "unfair." We're talking fines and prison.

This has implications for anyone doing business with UK consumers, including website visitors and those on email lists.

Transparency and disclosure are going to be key to complying with these new regs. In particular, word-of-mouth marketing campaigns will be affected by the new regulatory requirements.

The big unknown is whether the UK will decide to enforce this beyond borders to affect marketers based in the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc. Note that the U.S. has by bilateral agreements enforced anti-spam laws against marketers residing in other countries, i.e. there is precedent for extraterritorial application.

Written more about this particular issue and linked to the relevant UK site with PDF documents here:
Unfair Word-of-Mouth Marketing Can Put You In Jail

Best wishes,

-Mike