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Hmm. They actually could last that long.

Was any authority or elected official involved? Highly unlikely.

Highly likely. The decision to block inappropriate sites on the municipal wifi was almost certainly made by such an official. Did that official decide to block boing-boing? Probably not, but it is a consequence of that person's decision that this government sanctioned censorship (for whatever reasons the site is being censored, as you point out we don't know) is happening.

Really folks, there is utterly no information here except that some filter somewhere blocked one page on Boingboing's website.

Hardly the First Amendment case that's being suggested and debated.

"In 1998, a United States federal district court in Virginia ruled that the imposition of mandatory filtering in a public library violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights. [Mainstream Loudon v. Board of Trustees of the Loudon County Library, 24 F. Supp. 2d 552 (E.D. Va. 1998)]" (source).

This filtering is almost certainly unconstitutional, based on the same arguments used in that case.

There are ads in there from many years ago, plus many duplicates. "alt.com" claims 3,466,253 members. "passion.com" claims 18,464,969 members, roughly 8% of the adult US population. Some of those have to be fake. (Statistically, most of those have to be fake.).

I still get spam from them based on an account I had with a now-defunct dating service back in 1998, sent to an e-mail address from the 1990s.

It's more like trespassing than theft if they're using a trojaned systems to send spam.

And what about the ECPA provision on unauthorized access to stored communications (Steve Jackson case)? Don't they apply here?

Adam, a classmate of mine in a course on Information Technology and the Law noted on the course newsgroup that FindLaw has the complaints online.

The irony is that this happened the same week we discussed the Napster case in the class.

You can make your employees sign contracts that forbid them from revealing trade secrets, and those contracts are enforceable.

I left out trademarks because they are pretty much orthogonal to the software patent problem.

You can make your employees sign contracts that forbid them from revealing trade secrets, and those contracts are enforceable.

I left out trademarks because they are pretty much orthogonal to the software patent problem.

Personally, though, I don't think that the "spam as theft" argument would stick. I think a stronger case could be made under the fraud statutes with regard to originator mis-representation.

Perhaps, but then you're trying to enforce something completely different. Generally, anti-spam legislation is designed to thwart a type of communication: the only qualification being that the communication has to be unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). To fall afoul of anti-spam laws doesn't require that the commercial message endorse a product fradulently ("ENLARGE YOUR PENIS, UP TO 6 INCHES!!!"), or inappropriately ("Sister Mary, of Our Lady of the Assumption - do you want to see pics of real amateur sluts?"). So, anti-fraud actions aren't really going to address the problems that anti-spam legislation backers want to address.

The problem with treating is that it isn't obvious that e-mail spam is theft. Frequently, court cases against spam pushers are couched using "trespass to chattels" laws. But those laws aren't perfect for this - take a look here for a discussion of some of the problems associated with it.

There are just too many laws which (a) are redundant, (b) used to restrict otherwise acceptable activity in the name of the crime they seek to deter. So, It should not surprise that libertarians (myself included) are wary of more laws when existing ones might suffice.

You're right in that laws can be misapplied. However, the counterargument here is that you can't prosecute something which isn't illegal. Just as prosecutors can misapply laws to prosecute actions outside of the intent of the authors, defendants can argue that existing laws do not apply to their actions - for example, by arguing that a trespass to chattels law doesn't make sense in the context of e-mail spamming.

The average citizen is quite ignorant about most scientific issues, and a single charismatic scientist can be highly influential in persuading people to pursue wrongheaded ideas. For example, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, has been arguably the most influential person in spreading the idea that the earth is "overpopulated." In the early 1970's he predicted many dire consequences as result of population growth. Among other things, he predict that ten's of millions of children would starve in countries like India.

Ehrlich supported rather drastic measures to prevent the catastrophe he believed to be inevitable--including such things as the forced sterilization of all Indian men with three or more children, and adding contraceptives to food and water supplies.

Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, challenged Ehrlich's theories. He argued that humans were the "ultimate resource" and that the results of human ingenuity--better fertilizers, new crop varieties, more efficient farming techniques--would allow humans to keep pace with expected population growth.

One of Ehrlich's predictions was that the price of limited resources, such as elemental metals, would rise as more humans competed for the same resources.

Simon offered Ehrlich a wager centered on the market price of metals. "...Ehrlich would pick a quantity of any five metals he liked worth $1,000 in 1980. If the 1990 value of the metals, after adjusting for inflation, was more than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became more scarce), Ehrlich would win. If, however, the value of the metals after inflation was less than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became less scare), Simon would win. The loser would mail the winner a check for the change in price.

Ehrlich agreed to the bet and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten.

By 1990, all five metal were below their real price level in 1970. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07. Prices of the metals chosen fell so much that Simon would have won the bet even if the prices hadn't been adjusted for inflation..." (see Brian Carnell's overpopulation.com for more details about the wager.)

Robin Hanson took the idea of wagering about scientific questions a step further, proposing to create an idea futures market. "...Imagine a betting pool on disputed science questions, where the current odds are treated as the current intellectual consensus. For example, people might bet on whether cold fusion will be used to produce power by the year 2020. Right now the odds would be fairly low - say 20-to-1 against. But as the results of new research became known, and if more people became convinced that cold fusion worked, the odds would rise. And if cold fusion became a reality by 2020, those early supporters would make a bundle.

Such betting markets would become "idea futures" markets - like corn futures markets, except you'd bet on the future settlement of a scientific controversy instead of the future price of corn. The system could increase the public's interest and role in science, and betting odds could serve as a scientific barometer to guide mass media and public policy...."(Idea Futures: How making wagers on the future can make it happen faster by Robin Hanson. WIRED, Sept. 1995, Idees Fortes section, p.125 )

State gambling laws unfortunately prohibit the formation of such markets. As a result, a potentially very valuable mechanism for eliminating dangerously unfounded ideas is thwarted.