Appropriateness of requiring people to give their name/email in order to download special content from website

On May 2020 The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted the new guidelines on consent https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_guidelines_202005_consent_en.pdf

It was reminded to controllers and processors that consent to data processing must be free and transparent related to the purposes of the processing. Article 4 (11) GDPR defines consent as: “any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.”

Therefore, if you are asking data to verify if the individual is human and you will not process any more data, the request will be coherent with the expectation of the subject (I give the email because I want to download the pdf). On the contrary, you must make clear to the individual that data will be used to send a newsletter or other material so that s/he is informed that data will be used to download material and send him email/promotion/anything else. 

You can find more information about GDPR and email marketing here:Is consent needed? Six legal bases to process data according to GDPR: https://advisera.com/eugdpracademy/knowledgebase/is-consent-needed-six-legal-bases-to-process-data-according-to-gdpr/Email marketing in the era of GDPR – How to ensure compliance? https://advisera.com/eugdpracademy/blog/2019/05/27/gdpr-and-email-marketing-rules-for-compliant-campaigns/

Four main questions for obtaining and managing data subjects’ consent under GDPR: https://advisera.com/eugdpracademy/knowledgebase/four-main-questions-for-obtaining-and-managing-data-subjects-consent-under-gdpr/

You can also consider enrolling in this EU GDPR Foundations Course: https://advisera.com/training/eu-gdpr-foundations-course//