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WA Wins First Case Against Deceptive Spammer
GPFCharlie writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is running this article about the first victory by a US state against a spammer. Apparently the judge ruled that a civil trial was not even necessary, since the state had already proven their case. The law was upheld by the WA Supreme Court and an appeal was turned down by the US Supreme Court. Next phase: penalties. How about 5 million hand-written apology letters?"
"Right now it's a bunch of states making their own laws about how people in other states can do business," Crandall, his attorney, said. "It's a profoundly interesting case about whether the government can regulate business on the Internet, or at least regulate equally."
No, it's Washington state saying how you have to do business in Washington state. It's not like they don't already do this, in every other area of business. If you want to sell something in Washington state, you have to abide by their laws. This isn't new. If you don't like their laws, don't sell there.
And I don't think you're going to get much sympathy by whining "but how do I know what state you're in, if I'm indiscriminately spamming you"? ;)
IMHO a lot of spam does fall under the category of "free Speech"
Your opinion is just wrong.
Spam has NOTHING to do with free speech, any more than any other type of harrassment.
Free speech is the right to say whatever you want.
Free speech is NOT the right to force people to listen to you, nor is it the right to force people to PAY to listen to you.
Spam is harrassment.
Spam theft of service.
Spam is NOT speech.
There are an increasing number of 'victories' in the war on spam by government ; but overall the number of Spam sent is increasing.
While the government can fight blatent abuse of a person or companies communication rights ; they have not (and I believe they can not) come up with legislation that actually makes spam illegal while allowing all legitimate communications to be made unhindered.
The solution to Spam and the new 'free marketing' medium of the Internet really is to use an Authentication system for all communications that are prone to abuse ; and that would work for telephones as well.
What we need is an Authentication System in the email protocol itself, and that is what my company - SolidBlue is working on over the next year or so. Interested researchers can email us and we'll see if we can get an RFC group started.
Ace
Please, think carefully before invoking Big Brother to solve your problems!
Using the term "Big Brother" (from Orwell's 1984) is simply inflammatory. From now on, please use "the government" when referring to the government.
Sending e-mail should not be a crime!
So where does all of this end? If they can steal my bandwidth, time, and storage with spam, what's next? Should we repeal the junk fax law so that they can steal my expensive thermal paper, too? Should we take restrictions off of telemarketers so that they can call me collect and mis-identify themselves? Why not just let businesses advertise by throwing a brick through my window with a flyer attached ("Window broken? Call A&A Glass for a free repair estimate..."). While we are at it, maybe the USPS should deliver anonymous-sender advertising at no cost and just force me to pay the postage on delivery -- since that's analogous to what happens with spam.
Commercial speech does not (and should not) enjoy the same level of protection as non-commercial speech. In Central Hudson Gas & Electric v Public Service Commission the Supreme Court announced a test for evaluating commercial speech regulations that would be used in many subsequent cases. The Central Hudson test recognizes the constitutionality of regulations restricting advertising that concerns an illegal product or service, or which is deceptive. For all other restrictions on commercial speech, the Court's test requires that the government show that the regulation directly advances an important interest and is no more restrictive of speech than necessary.
Preventing the theft of millions of dollars from U.S. citizens and businesses represents an important interest and making e-mail advertisers use opt-in, correctly identify themselves, and provide automated systems for address removal is no more restrictive than necessary. When a sender falsifies e-mail header information and provides a forged from:/reply-to: address, that's deceptive and passes the aforementioned Central Hudson test as speech which can be constitutionally regulated.
This seems a lot like what we all complain about when it deal with other sorts of laws -- "but you can't do that, what he did was legal in Russia!"
What if a U.S. state passes a law regulating what sort of material it is permissible to transmit to their citizens. Assuming the law were not struck down as unconstitutional, should everyone in the U.S. now have to follow this state law, to make sure that they don't accidentally transmit banned material to residents of that state (for example, by placing it on a website where a resident of that state could access it)? This would end up with the result that everyone must follow the union of all state laws (thus the most restrictive in each category). Which is already happening with spam laws, which I don't see as a good precedent.
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