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?"

Comments

Crandall follies

[cascadingstylesheet]

"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"? ;)

Re:YES!

[schon]

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.

but isn't this what we all complain about?

[Trepidity]

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.