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Court Rejects Intel Electronic Trespass Charge
NearlyHeadless writes "The California Supreme Court reversed lower court rulings that ex-Intel employee Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi committed electronic trespass by sending e-mail to Intel employees, reports the San Jose Business Journal. E-mail has the same protection as other communication, according to the court's opinion, available here (PDF link)." We've covered Hamidi's case more than once in the past.
No, the ruling said that you can *not* sue emailers for electronic trespass.
This shouldn't. Spam should be illegal if you can't opt out or you keep receiving it if you do opt out. I know people who actually like receiving it.
Wrong! You didn't read the whole opinion. It said that such a claim may not be based on the _content_ of the messages. The court took pains to make it clear that you can still sue for spam that overloads machines. In other words, you can't sue because of what the sender says, only the amount of what he sends.
Another intel employee rotting away in federal prison as a "material witness" without being charged.
It really only gives non-commercial 'spammers' a defence. Somebody else already pointed out that the courts have a wide distinction between the protections afforded to personal speech and commercial speech (e.g. ads). They classified Hamidi's comments as non-commercial speech and then allowed it on that basis.
This is also a relatively narrow ruling... it only applies to the 'trespass to chattels' issue. That is only one of a few rules that can be used to nail spammers (though an obvious one).
This rulling almost certainly would not apply to someone who hijacked my proxy server to cycle spam out to the universe. There are all sorts of reasons to recognize something like that as a distinct case. (I think you could probably also sue under conversion of property provisions, as well as things like inducing breach of contract.).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
How Appealing, the first and IMHO best blog devoted to appellate litigation, has numerous links to articles about this case, including one to this discussion. :)
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)