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Court Rejects Intel Electronic Trespass Charge

Posted by simoniker on from the get-orff-moi-server dept.

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.

7 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Victory for Spammers? by NumberField · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This new ruling seems like it could conflict with some of the efforts to fight spam. The ruling says:

    "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...

    1. Re:Victory for Spammers? by taybin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well frankly, I'm not so eager to lose rights just to fight spam. I'm happy with this court's decision.

      I would say this was a victory for everyone except IBM.

    2. Re:Victory for Spammers? by grantsellis · · Score: 5, Insightful
      reconciling this ruling with anti-spam rules may be tricky since this gives spammers a defence...
      Not really. IANAL, but there's a chasm between commercial speech and noncommercial speech you could drive several dump trucks through. Witness the national do-not-call list.

      Now, if this guy had been trying to sell Viagra ...
    3. Re:Victory for Spammers? by Z0mb1eman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How this affects spam was one of the first things I thought about, as well. But from the ruling:

      >nor impairs its functioning

      I would argue that spam impairs my ability to use my computer - e.g. when 19 out of 20 messages are spam, and I either have to waste time getting to that one message I want to read, or miss it completely. Such an argument is easy to make, and anyone should understand it, even if they're not tech-savvy.

      I suppose the difference is between the ex-employee sending one or two emails to each individual, or mailbombing their inboxes with several hundreds or thousands of messages. Which means part of the spam problem is perspective - from my point of view, I am effectively under attack when I receive a few hundred spam emails; from the point of view of each individual spammer, they're only sending me one email, so how can they be blamed for that?

      Idle musings on a Monday afternoon.

      --
      ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
  2. Umm... blacklist? by Prince_Ali · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does Intel lack the ability to block external e-mail addresses? Geez, I'm buying AMD next time!

    --
    Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
  3. good. by Muerto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Electronic Trespass by taybin · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, the ruling said that you can *not* sue emailers for electronic trespass.