by Herman Manson (@marklives) The Protection of Personal Information Bill (POPI), which will probably be signed into law in the next few months, will have a significant impact on how marketers may obtain and handle customer information.
Elizabeth de Stadler, a senior associate at Esselaar Attorneys, will be speaking at Content 2013, the content marketing conference taking place 
on the 25th and 26th February 2013 at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, on the impact of POPI on especially content marketers.
Her talk will cover what the implications and legal obligations are when it comes to the data content marketers collect, what security requirements are required to protect user information, what is required for consent and how the limitations of usage have changed. MarkLives asked her for some insight into the Protection of Personal Information Bill in advance of her talk at Content 2013.
Q: When will POPI come into effect and what timeline does it give content marketers to comply with regulations?
Elizabeth de Stadler: The Protection of Personal Information Bill has not been signed into law yet. This will probably happen in the first quarter of 2013. Even then businesses will be given a year to comply. This means that there is still time to reflect on the real implications of the Bill and implement solutions. It does not mean that you must ignore the Bill – it has very real implications and it will take time to become compliant.
MarkLives: Briefly, what are the implications for Content Marketers in terms of Protection of Personal Information Bill?
De Stadler: The Bill regulates anything you do (or don’t do) with personal information no matter how you came to have it in the first place. You have to inform consumers that you have it, how you got it and what you are going to do with it. The Bill itself recognises several ways of getting personal information and reasons for keeping it and using it, but the best way to ensure that what you are doing is legal is to have the consumer’s informed consent.
So it will affect the way you gather information for market research (for instance), but I would say that the biggest implication for Content Marketers is how they use personal information to contact consumers with more marketing material like newsletters. The Bill specifically regulates ‘direct marketing’. This is a risky area as we already know that direct marketing can irritate consumers to the point that it is bad for your image and that they are willing to go through great lengths to complain about it.
The Bill will also apply to your existing database. This means that Content Marketers must start thinking of strategies for how they are going to ‘legalise’ the personal information which they already have and what method they are going to follow to ensure that the information that they get from now (as in tomorrow) on is legal.
MarkLives: What are the penalties for contravening the act?
De Stadler: The Bill makes place for yet another regulator, the Information Regulator. The regulator will be able to investigate businesses on 
its own and respond to complaints from the public. There are criminal sanctions in the Bill, but more importantly the Information Regulator may impose fines of up to R10 million. That is on top of your legal costs. That is the legal risk, but of course there are other risks involved here.
If the Information Regulator does not like the way a business is treating personal information it will serve a compliance notice in terms of which the business will have a limited time to correct its behaviour. Experience has told us that changing the way you gather, store and protect personal information can be very complicated. Doing it in a short time with the Information Regulator breathing down your neck may be more expensive than doing it on your own time. So, there is the risk of operational costs.
Lastly, there is of course the risk to your reputation. Consumers have more power now than they did 10 years ago because of the platform given to them by social media. If you spam them (or it feels to them like you are spamming them) they are able to complain very publicly.
MarkLives: What is the major plus points of this legislation from a consumer point of view?
De Stadler: Personally, I would say the chance that it might decrease spam. If you think about it protecting personal information is about making it harder for businesses to sell personal information or to use it without the consumer’s consent making it harder to bombard consumers with unwanted marketing.
MarkLives: Do you think we are being over-regulated in South Africa?
De Stadler: No, not in the area of privacy protection. Save for the Consumer Protection Act and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act we have not had any formal privacy protection in this country. This Bill is based on international standards and is bringing us up to speed with the rest of the world. Whether it will work of course remains to be seen.
Looking at the bigger picture, there is some concern that the cost of setting up a business has become prohibitive for small businesses due to the volume of regulations that have been introduced in the last couple of years.
– Industry news you’ll make time for. Sign up for our free newsletter!