This session seemed to be more targeted to the merchants than the affiliates in the audience.

A lot of what was discussed was the liability of merchants for the actions of their affiliates, including for breaking the CAN-SPAM rules.

It was an interesting discussion, but I was particularly interested from the point of view of selling products through Clickbank and other affiliate networks.

Based on what was said in this session, you could be held responsible if one of your affiliates misrepresents your products or uses spam to promote it.

I think this could be a significant issue if you have a popular product on Clickbank in particular. It's so easy for anyone to grab your link and promote your product, with no real controls over who signs up and no way of tracking what they're doing.

Rosalind Gardner has written about the issue of potential problems with Clickbank affiliates on her blog so it's something that does happen.

There was also discussion about the FTC rules over data security and how you can be prosecuted for not securing your customers' data properly.

This is something that I'm going to follow up with Aweber and a couple of other services I use where customer information would be stored. I'm sure these companies are well aware of the rules, but I'd like to confirm that this is something they're actively monitoring.

Finally, the FTC provides plenty of information about the various rules and regulations on their website at www.ftc.gov. If you've got any concerns or just want to get more familiar with what's expected of you, that's the place to look.