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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.
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...
This signature has Super Cow Powers
"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.
No, the ruling said that you can *not* sue emailers for electronic trespass.
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.
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
He removed anyone from receiving the emails if they asked to be removed. Generally to be considered harassment you have to ask the offending party to stop their harassing behavior, and they have to ignore your request. The court mentions this in their statement, so it seems to be a well established fact. This "electronic tresspass" business is fairly scary, and I'm glad it was struck down.
AccountKiller
Those vindictive BASTARDS!
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.
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.
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.
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.