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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.
...now I can try this at the massive state gvmt where I work!
Can we hope the trend will continue?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This is a pretty big issue. But I don't think it should be regulated by legal means.
Rather, if they don't want people e-mailing them, why not just make the e-mail addresses internal, or block unauthorized e-mail addresses.
Going about it the way they are would be like leaving the door to my house or car wide open and then getting mad when someone comes in and looks around.
Stupid...
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So, Can we sue spammers for Electronic Trespass?
"After reviewing the decisions analyzing unauthorized electronic contact with computer systems as potential trespasses to chattels, we conclude that under California law the tort does not encompass, and should not be extended to encompass, an electronic communication that neither damages the recipient computer system nor impairs its functioning. Such an electronic communication does not constitute an actionable trespass to personal property," the high court says.
The ruling tried to address this ("Nor does our holding affect the legal remedies of Internet service providers (ISP?s) against senders of unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail (UCE)..."), but reconciling this ruling with anti-spam rules may be tricky since this gives spammers a defence...
Does Intel lack the ability to block external e-mail addresses? Geez, I'm buying AMD next time!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
the more cases like this the better of we are. I'm tired of big companies pressing charges on people and winning because judge and jury have no idea about anything technical... nor do they understand our future is dependant on their disicions.
I confess, I posted... but I didn't do it on purpose. It was the one armed typist! yeah... that's it.... Typist of terror? That's got a ring to it.
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Are people tresspassing if they phone you without your permission?
Damn silly case, if you have a phone number, email address or postal address then people are going to use it.
Nobody signs a lifelong contract preventing them from criticising their ex-employers.
Lugor, your post regarding the TV Brick in the Intel court case article consitutes electronic trespass.
I think the difference can be understood in the realm of non-electronic world. Let's say I have a business. I have a customer inside, and one of his friends sees him and they end up having a conversation outside my door. Do I have a legitimate right to boot them? Probably not.
However, this is different if the person is a solicitor, as I believe businesses do have the right to prevent solicitation on their premises. I would assume the same for email - ie, I have the right to restrict solicitation on my premises, but likely not non-disruptive legitimate communication.
Not to mention which the server could make a strong argument toward spam impairing its functioning not to mention which eroding the value of the service they provide, ie, an email account to customers that isn't nailed by spam. This was alluded to by the decision. In the real world, this would be like a business owner who had so many solicitors on his doorstep that he had to clear them out so the customer could actually see the door.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Yeah, except it's a bad analogy. It was more like having your house number posted and then someone sending mail to it. There was no intrusion, just mail sent.
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"Electronic tresspass," my ass.
It sounds from the case like Hamidi wouldn't stop emailing Intel employees even after the company asked him to stop.
When Intel took measures to block Hamidi from the servers, and Hamidi continued to find a way around them, the appropriate crime to charge him with is "Harrassment."
IANAL, but that would have been a HELL of alot easier to prove than "electronic tresspass" and probably wouldn't have ended up on the front page of Slashdot.
-- Funksaw
I don't see why he had the right to use Intel's equipment (servers and associated hardware) to distribute his message. Granted, it's open to the public but that doesn't mean there is some right for anyone to use the equipment. The EFF said in an amicus brief
While I understand EFF's argument and it is persuasive I still tend to fall on Intel's side. Looking at Intel's web site policy it doesn't say "we reserve the right to restrict your access" or something similar. I don't know...it's a tough call. I'll have to think about it...
Uh, that is trespassing. You should get mad if someone does that. (well, I don't know about the car, but it certainly applies to the house). There's a difference between trespassing and breaking-and-entering. Even if there's no fences or locks or doors, it's still trespassing.
A better analogy would be you putting a fence around your yard, with a big sign that says no trespassing, and then getting upset when the mailman opens your gate, walks up to your front door, and puts a letter in the mail slot. That's what Intel was trying to argue, and rightly, they were told to get bent. Now, if it's not the mailman, but Alan Ralsky walking up your path with a 55 gallon drum full of penis enlargment pills, then that will (hopefully) be a different story.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Somehow they have to define, legally, a difference between mass emails and commercially driven mass emails (that is spam). Maybe it can hinge on the user being able to easily find the sender and remove themselves from the list.
I have thrown around the idea a couple of times with friends the concept of having a domain (a SPM domain perhaps) that you have to register to send spam. All spam would originate from this domain and would be easy to block because of it. People who want it (brain damaged as they are) could get it and the rest of us could avoid it. And of course hiding the origin of the email would be a finable offense.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Granted, the email sent wasn't of a commercial nature, so probably couldn't be considered spam. You have to wonder though; at what point do 'damages' begin. This guy sent email to 30,000 people, on a more than on occasion. That's got to waste some company time.
On a side note, he was also complaining about employment practices, and suggesting that people get a job elsewhere. I'd call that 'damage'. I'd also seeing about filing a libel suit.
hell was Intel thinking?
Trespass to chattels?
They basically argued that if I fire someone and that person emails his friend/coworker, it is as if that person had keyed my car on the way out.
No Intel, you may not use the courts to silence dissent... do not pass go, do not collect $200.
From the article: "The consequential economic damage Intel claims to have suffered, i.e., loss of productivity caused by employees reading and reacting to Hamidi's messages and company efforts to block the messages, is not an injury to the company's interest in its computers -- which worked as intended and were unharmed by the communications -- any more than the personal distress caused by reading an unpleasant letter would be an injury to the recipient's mailbox, or the loss of privacy caused by an intrusive telephone call would be an injury to the recipient's telephone equipment."
Precisely correct.
Intel should have charged him with some form of harrassment. They picked the wrong charge, which was obviously bogus to begin with. For the S.C. to side with Intel on this would have set a terrible and incorrect precedent.
Not that I particularly agree with Hamidi's actions, but this ruling makes sense IMHO.
Hamidi is now considered damaged goods though. Employers are not excited about hiring someone who bitches about worker's rights. If you ask me, Intel got their money's worth in legal fees.
Of course, Hamidi took his career in his own hands when he pressed the Send button. I wonder if he's currently employed or bitter and still looking. If the latter, he might start sending bullets instead of e-mails.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
I got one once. One of our sales guys was secretly trying to get his own competing startup company going (after the boom was over- mistake #1), but he accidentally submitted his cellphone bill to the company for reimbursement (mistake #2) and they noticed the calls. When it hit the fan, he quit and sent a "swan song" email to the company and badmouthed a whole bunch of people in it (mistake #3). Most of us didn't know a thing about it until we came in one morning, checked our mail, and found the "fond farewell" in our inboxes. It didn't advertise any open positions in his new company (I guess that would make it commercial speech). It was just an emotional rant, with some badmouthing of a few specific individuals. Clearly he wasn't exercising good judgment when he sent it. But it blew over rather quickly. Nobody wasted too much time talking about it, other than to remark "well I guess X isn't working here anymore."
I've never deleted that email. Every so often I open it again just to imagine the balls it must take to send something like that. If a court were to rule that such an email constituted "electronic trespass", I would be very upset. That having been said, I cannot stress enough that SENDING AN EMAIL LIKE THAT IS A MISTAKE. If you're ever tempted to do it, DON'T. Once you send it they'll be talking about what an idiot you are forever. If you're in a small industry, you'll forever be meeting people who have heard about it.
He got work with another company after his startup failed. Ironically, we signed a deal with that company recently, so he'll be selling our products again. When he's not stabbing you in the back, he's a pretty good sales guy.
The pivotal issue in this case was not privacy vs. freedom or liberty, it all came down to whether or not the email Mr. Hamidi sent amounted to a trespass to chattel.
In first year of law school, people are generally introduced to a case in torts Compuserve. In this case, Compuserve won it's case against spammers on exactly this tort: trespass to chattel. The court ruled that the extensive use of the servers amounted to significant "dispossesion" of the chattel(property). The court talked about the significant useage of memory and CPU cycles.
So the struggle the lower courts in this case were trying to resolve was whether or not this act of emailing 30,000 amounted to the detrimental use of Intel's chattel(property). It is important to note that you cannot win on this tort without showing damages occurred. And it was upon this very issue of damages that the S.C. decided that this did not meet the requirement of the tort.
While the Compuserve case opened the door to allow lawsuits in the abuse of another's system through email, this case is a milestone in that it limits how wide the door is.
The Supreme Court made the proper judgment.
Another intel employee rotting away in federal prison as a "material witness" without being charged.
Here is one very informative excerpt:
and another:
So in short, the guy can be sued for those emails, but not on the basis of some "damage" they cause the company mail servers...
A better analogy would be putting a "NO TRESSPASSING" sticker on your mailbox. Remember, the mailbox's intended use is a receptacle for incoming mail. (Note that this does not extend to flagrant abuse of the mailbox, say by stuffing it with thousands of flyers, especially if measures have been taken to prevent mass emails from clogging the mailbox. That does not fall within intended use.)
The mailman arrives, and puts ten letters in the mailbox. I read nine letters which concern my usual business. The tenth distresses me emotionally- so I sue the sender, claiming that they have trespassed my mailbox! But the sender has used it as intended, the mailbox functioned properly as a receptacle for the letter, and no damage was done to it. You cannot define the intended use of your mailbox as "a receptacle only for letters that you like".
Can you imagine the legal consequences if this summary judgment were allowed to stand? Sending even a single handwritten email to anybody would open you up to a lawsuit for "mailbox trespass"- if the recipient decided he doesn't like you or your message, he could sue you for trespass and cite this case as precedent!
It's a good thing Intel was told to get bent. They may have had a case if they built their case differently (like, where did this guy get everyone's email addresses?) but the precedent they sought to create would have been a disaster. What is truly scary is the fact that someone in the lower courts actually granted Intel's motion for summary judgment.
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. :)
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