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Fighting Spam With A 17th Century Law
A reader writes "Here is an interesting article which describes how a law from the year 1610 could make Spam illegal in Australia. The same story in german can be found here." Actually, since the law stems from King James I (the VI, if you are Scottish), as such, could be held British Commonwealth wide.
Why only go back 400 years? Let's fight spam with the Magna Carta:
All Merchants (if they were not openly prohibited before) shall have their safe and sure Conduct to depart out of England, to come into England, to tarry in, and go through England, as well by Land as by Water, to buy and sell without any manner of evil Tolts, by the old and rightful Customs, except in Time of War.
See, spammers are merchants selling stuff, but not by the old and rightful Customs, in peacetime. It works, and the stretch is... just as rubbery.
Bring some 1297 smack down on em. It should be just as effective.
The article didn't go into too many details as to what the 1610 law specified ("The ancient law forbids a person from interfering with the goods and chattels of another person without their consent" was about all I could find).
But the line "The law was brought in under King James I, and by extension it can be valid throughout the Commonwealth" intrigues me. Much of the legal system in the US is based on English law, from what I understand, and I believe that we often refer to precedent set by the laws governing the colonies, or England, before the creation of the US.
So, there's even a chance that a good lawyer could make use of this law in the US. I think. Anyone care to comment on this angle?
Earthlink's "Spaminator" is free, but it's just about useless. It catches about 1% of my incoming spam. SO they aren't making money on the blocking end, but they're probably making a killing selling their customer e-mails lists and conviently not blocking them in Spaminator.
Also, IIRC, Federal Law in the US prevents telco's from charging a fee for blocking your caller ID information.
sharkyfour.com
Scraping has been uphelp under the Computer Fraud and Tresspass act.
SPAMMERS that get email off of websites, are breaching copyright and terms of use (or at least on my site) on a website with a carefully crafted terms of use.
Fight Spammers!
By the same logic, the problem with breaking and entering is not the burglars, but rather the homeowner who doesn't install enough locks and anti-burglar alarms. I don't buy that.
.com domain. It *will* get probes by spammers trying to send a email to "joe@somecompany.com"
Why should I have to make it harder for people to legitimatley contact me, by for instance obscuring my email address on my web page [well, actually my webpage is down, so don't click that link]?
Anyway, spammers can guess your address even if it has never been published anywhere. Try to set up a mail server acting as a MX for some newly registered
I've been suggesting this approach for years (but wihout the bungled reporting). When the spam enters your system, it exerts physical dominion over your chattels (the bits, the head mechanism, draws additional power, etc.). Trespass clearly applies, just as when some dolt lifts you windshield wiper to insert an ad.
The reporting is a bit mish-mashed, though: Common Law comes from the courts, yet it reports trespass as coming from a particular king (and it would have to have been a king *and* parliament).
I've always assumed trespass to chattels to be Common Law, not a statute, but I'm not willing to spend a half a day looking it up . . . my guess is that the seminal cases in the courts date to his reign, and possibly were decided by the high court known as "the King's Bench," which followed him about England hearing cases & appeals . .
hawk, esq.
The law, if extended to email, could apply to any mail or network traffic affecting a computer owned by someone else. As much as getting rid of spammers may be a Good Thing, we really, really don't want it applied to email (or any form of network traffic) lest you find yourself getting sued for trying to connect to the wrong address by mistake (after all, a new log entry was created -- you altered the owner's machine without his consent!)
Fact is, if you send an email, it usually goes through dozens of systems, each of which could log your address and sell it to a spammer.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
There was this thing called a "Revolution" a few hundred years ago, which means the American colonies threw off Brittish rule and formed a new government, with new laws and such.
No shit, really?!?
Look. Just because we've formed a new country and disconnected ourselves from England doesn't mean that we don't accept some of her principles of law. I believe, for example, that much of US property law is derived from English law, though I'm having a devil of a time verifying any of this online right now. Which is why I asked if anyone here could comment on it.
No, we are not *bound* by England's laws. We certainly can't point to new laws in the British Commonwealth as precedent for our own. But we grew out of the British system -- our colonial laws were British laws, and our Constitution was written by people who'd grown up accustomed to those laws. It's my understanding that, in cases where current law is unclear or ambiguous, the courts have looked back to pre-colonial laws and practices for prececent.
Sheesh.
That depends.
If this "law" turns out to be something enacted through common law instead of an act of Parliament, this will apply to most of the US as well (since most state constitutions include English common law, Louisiana being the only exception I know of).
This is probably something worth looking up.
because in Scotland, everyone has the right to roam on private property! ie. There are no trespassing laws.
Applying tort law to computer systems is something that has been emerging recently. There have been similar arguments such as that to the hacker, where there is a trespass to your systems once it is hacked and you may seek damages if hackers damage your stuff (eg delete it). Unfortunately, because tort law is quite old and wasn't designed with computer systems in mind, there have been problems such as the fact that although deleting information may amount to trespass (ie damage to chattels), you need to rely on another legal authority if they don't actually delete stuff - ie if they just hack your system and do nothing (or snoop around).
Given that, we'll have to see how the case will turn out, but the common law precedence so far has had some problems in applying similar tortious concepts to trespass for computer systems.
Note that this is a classic situation where it is a matter for the government to legislate against, and not something you should litigate in court by relying on dodgy authority from 400 years ago.
This law explicitely mentions "Persons".
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Since the American Colonies were part of the Commonwealth at that time (in different ways, severally) this would also be part of -our- common law.
The American colonies split in order to -keep- the common law, which was being systematically denied them by the Elector of Hannover's government at that time.
What's worse than that is the fact British data protection laws covering the treatment of personal data make the US laws (or lack thereof) look like a fucking shambles, any company can drive a lorry through that gap.
Don't confuse some CCTV camera on a public street with personal privacy laws, if you issue a data protection request to the CCTV operator they're bound by law to give you CCTV footage, if they deny the request then you can sue them.
in cases where current law is unclear or ambiguous, the courts have looked back to pre-colonial laws and practices for prececent.
Supreme Court rulings cite common law all the time, sometime where existing law is ambiguous and sometime to reinforce existing interpretations.
See, for example, WASHINGTON et al. v. GLUCKSBERG et al.. In this case, which asserted a 14th Amendment right to assisted suicide, Judge Rehnquist wrote: "More specifically, for over 700 years, the Anglo American common law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide." He cites a 13th century legal treatise and Blackstone Commentaries from the 18th century.
Justice Scalia, concurring, writes: "We now inquire whether this asserted right has any place in our Nation's traditions. Here ... we are confronted with a consistent and almost universal tradition that has long rejected the asserted right, and continues explicitly to reject it today, even for terminally ill, mentally competent adults. To hold for respondents, we would have to reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice..."
In effect, he makes an appeal to common law to justify a narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment instead of broadening it.
No, the fact that we have formed a new country does mean that we don't accept English law.
When this country was formed, the founders based their new laws on their idea of what would be fair and just. Now just by human nature they would be keeping some of the laws that England had, after all they weren't all bad. However, even in these cases they didn't simply copy the old laws into the new books, they weren't that lazy.
Besides, the laws are defined solely on how the courts interpret them. Just because our laws have similar origins does not mean that they have stayed that way. As dynamic as they are, odds are you wouldn't be able to find a single law that is completely identical between the two countries.
Am I the only one who doesn't think this is common sense? (and not trolling)
-Space for rent