Slashdot Mirror
Spammers Lose Court Battle Against Univ. of Texas
voma writes "The University of Texas didn't violate the constitutional rights of an online dating service when it blocked thousands of unsolicited e-mails, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday. White Buffalo Ventures, which operates LonghornSingles.com, had appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying it had complied with all anti-spam laws."
the only way to block something is if you have control of a machine that it is going to. if it is your machine than you have all of the rights in the world to block anything that comes in or tries to go out. if you have control of the machine by less than legal means, well that's another issue.
So the school sold all these addresses to a spammer, presumably for the purpose of having spam sent to them and then blocked all the messages? I'd probably be annoyed too. Of course, it is the students who should be even more angered that the university would sell them out like that.
...what's their ip address to block?
do "online dating services" have constitutional rights?
I need to speak with a corporate lawyer to find out what is required of me to incorporate myself so I can get some of these rights that the constitution alludes to.
The first amendment gives you the right to free SPEECH, not free listeners.
Just because you say it doesn't mean everyone (or anyone) has to listen to you.
"The University of Texas didn't violate the constitutional rights of an online dating service "
Since when do dating services have constitutional rights? Isn't it convenient that corporations can cherry pick when they want to be corporations and when they want to be individuals?
If there is anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.
That'd be VistaSingles.com now, thank you.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If the ruling had been any different, I'd have to seriously question the sanity of the US justice system - of course, I have to do that anyway.
Just because you put your turn signal on, and following all the road rules correctly you turned into my driveway, it doesn't mean that you have the right to park on my property.
It's a first step towards acknowledging that corporations should have no rights - at least not unless they're willing to take on responsibilities too.
(Yes, I'm a hopeless optimist...)
While this IS a good victory against spammers, I really worry about the constitutionality of such an action, UofT is a government funded school and as such should not be able to suppress the rights of free speech, even unpopular speech.
The Can-SPAM act says that it has no effect on the ability of the ISP to filter deny the spammer the ability to use their system. (Section 8(c).).
Fight Spammers!
It's University of Texas at Austin.. not University of Texas.
This decision is a relief. I've blocked *all* IP traffic from most of Asia. I was a tad worried that the entire continent of Asia would be able to sue me for closing my server to them. All right then, who's next? Eastern Europe? Former Soviet states? I'm an IP blocking fool! And only a written, signed apology from each and every citizen of every country I blocked is going to make it better.
In all seriousness, while doing this obviously has no impact on zombies that send spam, it did have a massive positive impact on our mail server. Hopefully, we'll see a decrease in zombie activity as Win XP SP2 continues to be more widely deployed.
I don't respond to AC's.
Well, it would seem that this is somewhat of a victory, seeing as how this may hopefully serve as some sort of precedent for blocking unsoclicited e-mail at the university level (IANAL but this seems that it couldn't be an issue in the private sector).
The article is short, but the lines
"The university said it was also responding to complaints from students and faculty"
&
"At the time, UT issued a cease and desist order, but White Buffalo refused to comply. So UT blocked all the e-mail messages from White Buffalo's IP address"
pretty much sum up enough reason to blacklist them. Glad to know the spammers probably burned a lot of money on the court case though.
(Or maybe a free slashdotting, depending on your view)
I don't mind some company sending out emails about getting an extra 3 inches, printer ink cartridges, or hOt XxX pOrN!!!1!!, but I do mind having to listen to what they have to say if I don't want to.
Sure I don't have to open the actual email, but seeing it in my inbox where it takes up space and time to get rid of it is enough. I'll start sticking up more for spammers rights as soon as they start respecting mine. Until then it's really hard to give two shits or a handshake about some asshats who've generally been dicks to you and everyone for as long as they've been on the net.
The Eyes of Texas are not upon you...
The spammers "legally obtained the email addresses from the University" via an open records request for a list of utex.edu email addresses, then pretended that this meant they'd paid for the "right" to spam anyone associated with the University of Texas. More details here: Texas Attorney General's Office.
Then why aren't they suing schools that use Bess.
Or even Corporations that block emails/websites?
As a UT student set me say...Thank GOD
The Consitution does not grant rights to a corporation, but to individuals. Also, the right to free speech does not mean that you have the right to post it on my property without my permission.
Was this thumper called "Brother Jeb"? If so, he ain't just a Southern Phenom - he was at Wichita State back when I was an undergrad - ca. 1985 or so. Showed up for a couple of years. Was roundly made fun of, and was not, to the best of my knowledge, officially removed from campus, but rather I think he finally "figgerd" out that all those " LEEEEEZZZZZZBIANS and MAAAAAA-STURBATORS " were not going to listen to him.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Score one for common sense. I'm getting tired of reading bullshit about San Andreas and "Should medicinal cannabis remain illegal?" in the news.
Ok, this is just a question, and in no way intended to be a troll.
I am sure this story will be praised by the slashdot crowd, and as I work for a mid sized ISP, I can't say I am upset to see it happen. I am, however, curious about implications of the free speech side of this.
Let us assume that instead of commercial spam, this was a single individual that was sending out an email about some governmental injustice. For instance, if he had a friend that was being held under patriot act provisions without trial. Sure, a lot of people would junk the message, but judging from the messages I get that start with RE:FWD:RE:FWD:(ad infinitum), a goodly number of people would likely read it.
My question to slashdot is; Should there be occasions where it is ok to spam, and if so, how do we legislate it? If it can be justified, is bulk commercial spam just the price we have to pay for another venue by which our citizens can freely express themselves?
I would be very much interested to see if anyone had any legal precedents in the world of snail mail that might apply.
The Uni is NOT blocking speech. They are blocking their EARS. That is a huge difference...
Oh well, what the hell...
Don't mess with Texas.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This is like the "junk faxes," why should YOUR "free speech" cost ME money?
Had it gone the other way, it would have set dangerous presedent.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
annoying the hell out of people isn't a job. I treat my email box like my snailmail box. If it has an envelope i tend to look at it, same goes for email, if it looks like crap it most likely is crap.
w00t
the University of Texas for ruining my only chance at true love, and future damages from the children I will not have. I was promised by a eastern european fortune teller that I will find my one and only love in U of T, and that the connection will be made through this site. :(
It is officially: The University of Texas at Austin
The "The" must be capitalized, as must "University," "Texas" and "Austin." I shit you not. This is the official rule.
HOOK EM!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
No, I don't believe your analysis is correct.
It certainly isn't true that because it is "your machine" you have the right to block anything that comes to it. A phone company may own the phone network and switching equipment, but that doesn't give them the right to block, particularly selectively, what they choose to block. A university may own the student's mailboxes, but that doesn't mean that the university has the right to selectively filter the student's incoming mail.
I'm not saying that the decision is wrong, on the contrary, its great that the university blocks spam. But I do not think your analysis is the right basis for the decision.
HOORAY! I'm a UT grad student, and I hadn't realized until I read this story that I hadn't gotten one of the annoying longhornsingles spams in quite a while.
So here's a public thanks to my University's IT dept. and to the judge in question! Let's block more spammers!
Together with the fact that IE7 beta blocks AdSense by default, this is a pretty good day for anti-spamming.
So I can just imagine this case. A company with the god given right to make a profit, and the University of Texas. Perhaps if it would have been Texas Southern University, then the spammer would have had a chance. But no one in Texas who wants to live past the morning is going to rule against UT on something like this.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'm sad you think this kind of opinion is somehow viable. I'm really sad it was moderated insightful because that means you are not the only one thinking like this.
Modern american government has as one of it's main goals to create an environment where it's safe to do business and keep profits. That means businesses are given many priveledges(sp?) at the expense of individuals.
I'm really interested to know who influenced you to form this kind of opinion. School? Parents? TV? What generation do you belong? What do you do for a living?
Please don't take this as an insult because I'm not trying to start anything. I really want to know.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The "constitutional rights" of a corporation...
Their "right" to communicate over a private medium...
I think this is a fine example of how everyones priorities are fucked.
That said... I would disagree with the university if they blocked access to the website of the spammers. The site isn't hosted by the university, and blocking the communications medium would be wrong. However, the email server is a different matter. If it chooses to reject certain emails, too bad. It's a private server subject to the whims of the owner, and it should be beyond anyone to force someone to do something with their private server.
What's next, the spammers sue to make us all keep our relays open?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
The Family and Educational Right to Privacy Act trumps FoI at public universities. It stipulates rules about disclosure of information that students have stated are to be protected. The University of Texas does a very good job of protecting this data, at least in the groups that I've worked with.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Do dating services have constitutional rights?
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
You are right that it indeed protects individuals but wrong becuase corporations get much of the same protection under the law because the courts interpret the 14th and 15th (I think) ammendments to make corporations virtual people. Seriously. This is long-settled, from the very late 1800s.
It's not a great shock that spammers are trying to argue that following anti-spam laws gives them a RIGHT to your mailbox.
But it's malignant frippery.
That's like saying having a driver's license gives me a right to use your car whenever I want.
As to the University's filtering, within reasonable guidelines we are talking about the university's property (i.e., network facilties.) They're stuck with the responsibility of managing it for tens of thousands of students. Spammers are so vicious and abusive that their behavior is often indistinguishable from a denial-of-service attack.
The important point is that spammers are dangerous, deceptive, criminals, plain and simple. They belong in cages.(I am not educated in the US gov regs on the communication industry, but here is my simple analysis) the phone company can block on their switches, but that might put them in breach of contract with customers. even if it did not this would easily lead to loss of business. so in all logic they cannot afford to block on the switches. as a college student myself it would not surprise me to know that in my agreement with my university they are allowed to block any non school related emails. if I do not like that then there are tons of free email services for personal use. the university is not going to go out of business, they do not need people to use their accounts for personal reasons.
Close. The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad from 1886. It had to do with an assessment for taxation purposes and the arbitrary application of procedure in that assessment in violation of the 14th Amendment's requirement of equal protection under the law to all persons within a jurisdiction.
Basically, the government arbitrarily assessed fences that the company built along the roadside at $300/mile when they had no authority to do so when assessing the road. The rail company argued successfully in court that this was not within their right to do, and the Supreme Court basically refused to hear the county government's arguments in the case after it worked its way up to them stating that they believed that the 14 Amendment applied to corporations as well as individuals.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I did some spell correction for you:
"Modern american government has as one of it's main goals to create an environment where it's safe to do business and keep profits. That means businesses are given many privileges at the expense of individuals."
Read the Constitution. Not one word in there about corporate rights. Many, many statements about the rights of individual - wait for it - persons. Not corporations, but persons.
You've just spelled out in your statement exactly what is wrong with America today; not one single human being should have to suffer for ANY reason so that a business can make some profits.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
I am a student of the Univeristy of Texas at Austin in the department of Computer Science. I thoroughly agree with the decision, however, why do I keep seeing more spam in my inbox? I forward all my mail to my gmail account so it filter out the unwanted trash. Its not only from my UT Mail account but also from my CS account where I get the spam, from which I get the most spam. We need to stop spam because it is illegal. Only if people sign up for services that promote products, should it be legal.
The whole idea of the CAN-SPAM act is to make it easier to filter spam. That's how they get around the potential free-speech issues: you're free to speak, and I'm free to filter it.
The CAN-SPAM act is way of acknowledging that some speakers are obnoxious, and will not desist from speaking if you're not interested. So rather than eliminating the right to speak, you're just required to tag your speech and not to lie about who it's coming from. (You're also required to tag it if it's adult material.) If you don't do that, THEN we can infringe on your right to speak by arresting you.
So the act is well named: it says you CAN SPAM, but I can filter it out. They get around the whole free-speech issue by making it easier for me to ignore your speech if I want to.
Some would say that they have no right to send you the packets at all, but that's a harder case to make so this is a stopgap measure that has many, but not all, of the effects you want. The remaining problems have less to do with the holes in the CAN-SPAM act (i.e. that they're still sending you unwanted bits and using unwanted network traffic) than with the spammers who don't comply. The domestic ones need to be arrested, and the international ones... well, that's going to require some more ingenuity.
Yes, it is.
For instance:
1. A human being is born, lives, and then dies.
2. A corporation is born, may be revived many times (by changing those who run it), and can eventually die.
1. If a human being kills another human being it is called murder.
2. If a corporation kills another corporation it is called a take-over, buy-out, etc... and is perfectly legal. Even though the other corporation dies a (sometimes) violent death. (Like being driven into bankruptcy.)
1. If a human being talks about shortcomings of someone else - it is not considered slander or terms for legal battles (for the most part) so long as it is truthful.
2. If a human being (or corporation) talks about shortcomings of another corporation - it IS grounds for legal battles of all sorts and kinds even if what the person/company is talking about IS the truth. (As the recent Mike Lyons problems can attest to.)
1. A single human being does NOT usually have enough money to influence the government to get unhealthy, stupid, ignorant, laws passed that would take away a fellow citizen's rights.
2. A corporation can draw upon millions (and sometimes billions) of dollars to hire lobbiests, create fake companies which will write fake letters using dead people's names and addresses to make local, state, and federal legislators think that what people want is what is being written to them. (And even though the act of writing fake letters falls under mail fraud - no one seems to be prosecuted for it. And companies justify doing this "because everyone else is doing it and we have to protect ourselves from this kind of chicanery.")
Seems to me that as long as you own a business - anything goes.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
Spam IS speech. The problem with spam is that it's way, way too much speech; blocking the intersection, as you say. The goal of the CAN-SPAM act was to try to remove the obnoxious parts of spam without eliminating the speech aspects.
Under CAN-SPAM, you "can spam". You can say anything you like. But you have to be polite and add a few extra things, like a valid email address (no spoofing) and a tag if it's adult content.
They're trying to have it both ways. Saying "you can't send this email" opens up questions about whether a particular email you wish to send is illegal speech. So they try to keep the definition of "speech" as open as possbible, to make speech as free as possible. But you can easily filter it out, as long as they're in compliance with the law.
Those who don't comply with the law, which is most of them, are a whole separate issue.
It also leaves open the fact that they're still clogging networks, but the compliant spammers won't really be the problem. It'll be the spew-bots. That comes under a whole separate law against hacking.
A phone company is a common carrier. A college/university is not. The phone company is obligated to offer service to everyone. The university is not.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Corporations are only considered individuals as far as civil law is concerned. Corporations cannot be held guilty of criminal offenses and that is a good thing.
Corporations allow their employees and shareholders to hide from civil responsibility over their actions. Any fines or lawsuit seeking money for damages caused by an employee or shareholders actions as an employee or shareholder of a corporation can only go after the corporations assets, not the assets of the employees or shareholders.
Criminal law is a whole other beast, however. When a corporations commits a criminal violation, you don't want the people who were responsible for that to be able to hide from criminal prosecution. Any employees or shareholders responsible for the criminal act can be prosecuted fully for their criminal liability. Putting the corporation "in jail" is not going to punish the people
Mmmm.. Donuts
Corperations are fine. But not at the expense of people.
I agree with earlier comments. Corpertaions are not entitled to the same rights as people because they are NOT people.
Corperations have no human ethic, moral fibre, etc. They are lowest common denominator. Mobs. In fact, their very danger lies in this. Because the lowest common denominator is that we're the most greedy efficient killing machine (as a group) on the planet.
Clashes between large groups (called wars) are where some of the nastiest human behaviors have been observed.
Typically, individual humans are, by and large, OK. But groups of humans can be extrememly nasty. We are pack animals and it's in packs that we're dangerous.
And corperations are packs. Beware them.
I could ask you to cease and desist breathing. Your refusing to comply does not automatically give me the right to stop you from breathing. The legality of UT's actions are independent of the cease and desist order (which has no force in law).
In this case, the court correctly found that UT's action was legal.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Aardpig's Sig: Where blanket accusations of bigotry are OK...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In Russia they treat spammers with a blunt object
Now where is my Cloak of Invisibility
(pun intended)
I say that if any entity embarks on any activity that in any way, who's priomary intent involves the excahnge of money, goods, services, etc. that entity should not be allowed to claim refuge under the 1st amendment; period.
The portion of the 1st ammendment that applies was written to guarantee that individuals had every opportunity to express their ideas, beliefs, concerns, objections, etc.. It was not written to guarantee a revenue stream to companies or other organizations. "the press" is defined, not as 'the media', but as a person who prints his ideas for dissemination.
The injustice in this lawsuit has a lot to do with the burden this company is placing on the end user since with e-mail the user is:
1) paying for the delivery mechanism (data pipe)
2) paying for the storage it requires (hard drive space)
3) have to spend time sorting the good from the bad OR requred to obtain software to do that for them
4) forced to deal with the viruses and spyware (again costing money , time, and or other losses)
I fail to see where any company has a leg to stand on in complaining about having their e-mail blocked.
So whine away LonghornSingles.com - I'm not listening! ( that goes for any other company out there - my eyes, my ears, my right to ignore you)
Well, not quite. Being racist is one thing. But standing by while racist remarks are frequently made on /., and not saying anything because you feel gipped about outsourcing too --- is that so different?
I'm rather disgusted to the laissez-faire attitude to low-level racism, that appears to be the norm on /. -- hence my sig. However, I can't seem to write a single post nowadays without being criticized by people such as yourself. Honestly, I think for a bunch of bigots, you're rather over-sensitive.
As a gesture of goodwill, I've changed my sig to something more personal and self-aggrandizing. I'm sure you'll like it.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
*Runs from the big bad corporate monster*
I'm sure that quite a few here (certainly not all) would love to bash SPEWS, which essentially allows ISPs to do the same thing, just on a much larger scale.
Odd that it's okay for a university to block unwanted email messages, but a lot of people don't think it's okay for an ISP to block email messages.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
This has nothing to do with free speech.
The spammer's argument is analagous to:
Suing someone because they refused to answer the phone when you call
If they don't want to hear from you, that's their choice; if their employer or parents don't want you tying up the phone line, they can block you, and if you don't like it, tough.
Spammers have no inalienable right to send you their junk mail any more than the neighborhood trucking company can park their 18-wheelers in your driveway.
There's a big difference between snail mail and spam. Snail mail costs money to send; most spammers steal resources which is what makes their efforts economically viable even if their offers are unappreciated. People that send junk snail mail can only do it so long before it becomes economically impractical if their recipients have no need of their offers. Spammers however, don't have that problem, so they annoy people indefinitely until they're stopped.
Oh, so I'm a bigot because I don't spend all my time hunting down racist remarks, and berating the silly people that make them? I'm responsible for the assertions of one person: Myself.
And anybody who thinks that perhaps outsourcing might not be the great idea that some bureaucrats think it is, they must be racists too?
If you can't take criticism, stop talking. I'm just as free to respond to you as you are to say stuff.
I don't think I was being over-sensitive. You called everybody on Slashdot a bigot. I lampooned how silly your blanket assertion is.
Nothing self aggrandizing about it. It's a simple statement of fact. And, yes, it's something of which I'm justifiably proud. Where's your degree from?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
No, it's WindowsVistaSingles.com you insensitive clod.
that there were some violent people in Texas, but I never thought they could be responsible :)
Really?
You're full of shit. The university owns the machine so it can block whatever it pleases. If a student is getting non-academic mail, it can block that all it likes. You have few rights on an organizationally owned box. As a matter of fact, years ago (before the internet was super commercialized) I effectively banned about half of Finland on our (university) mail server for six months due to a load of lame hacking attempts.
"has as one of it's main goals to create an environment where it's safe to do business and keep profits"
Thankfully, we're still a democracy, and I'd like to change that. (And you smart-alecks saying "no, we're a republic", please do me a favor and shut up - that completely misses the point)
"That means businesses are given many priveledges(sp?) at the expense of individuals."
And you consider this a good thing? That a fictional entity that cannot be hold responsible for its actions has privileges over real human beings?
"I'm really interested to know who influenced you to form this kind of opinion"
Tit for tat - I'll give you my background, you give me yours.
I'm a programmer. I've worked in different areas before, service & manufacturing. I've worked as a consultant, an employee of small companies, an employee of publicly traded companies, and I ran my own business.
I've lived in a capitalist society. (USA). I've lived in a "socialist" society. (West Germany). I've had relatives behind the iron curtain.
All these experiences shaped my opinion - and I do believe that unless there is a way to ensure punishment for corporate misbheavior isn't completely meaningless, corporations enjoy too many rights.
They were a tool of the industrial revolution. Like many of those tools (Taylorism, anyone?), it has become outdated and needs to be replaced.
Whoop. '93. ;^)
(I'll take a -1, I don't care, it's the t-sippers we're talking about)
You called everybody on Slashdot a bigot.
No, I criticized the general attitude of Slashdot toward racism. I nowhere claimed all Slashdot readers racists. Your whole argument is a strawman.
Where's your degree from?
Oxford. And where is yours from (I'm referring to undergraduate; we'll get on to higher degrees in a moment)?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
On second thought, would a fee be involved? Would that make someone a pimp?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
In addition to the other comments that have been made so far, universities generally have terms of use associated with using their network resources. I, for one, am glad that my school (U of Portland) blocks much of the unsolicited email that is sent here.
The ASVAB is a military aptitude test. If he scored in the 99th percentile, that means that any military job is open for him.
As for them never calling back, well, I'm guessing that you fell through the cracks, they were working firmer prospects.
Yep, you should have been a definate prospect.
I don't read AC A human right
One question that I didn't see being asked at all here is "why should the university have to pay for the spam by devoting bandwidth and storage?"
Just because something is in the public sector doesn't give anyone carte blanche to externalize their costs to it.
The post office is in the public sector, yet you have to pay for mail with stamps. Roads are in the public sector, yet you have to pay taxes and automobile registration for their maintenance. So long as e-mail is free, it should be considered "delivered at server maintainer's discression."
This incident seems to be a case of trying to limit the amount of spam received to continue to provide service, not censor free speech.
I think the notion of a general attitude applied to a group of people is bigotry.
How's the aeronautical engineering program at Oxford?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
All the other people who responded to your post seem to have missed the point. It is not the recipients that are blocking the message. It is the ISP (the carrier) that decides what to censor and what not to censor. This is particularly troubling considering that the carrier is a government organization.
If someone wants to filter their inbox, let them. This is trivial since the 'spammer' followed the law on unsolicited email, thus allowing for a very simple filter. The ISP should not filter mail unless the recipient asks them to.
At the postal museum in Washington, D.C. there is a sign that reads:
I would have to agree with the parent, in respect to ownership. AFAIK, this has already been decided in respect to email...the owner of the domain's is the owner of the receiving equipment. In the case of businesses, this is easy...the workstations are part of the business. With the university, this would be true of the lab machines, but what of the private machines in the dorm? is the logical next question. To answer that: with phones, it requires a physical activation of the receiving equipment to initiate the original attempt at contact...I believe this to be the key elements for the privacy laws attached to land lines today. Even to bounce back to voicemail, one must electronically activate the receiving equipment to indicate the initial call. Email however does not rely on completing this initial activation of the receiving equipment. Rather what does require activation of equipment for an email is the receiving email server itself. Otherwise the initial connection is "non-delivered"...no voicemail.
Sidenote is that in the early days of telephone industry, the receiving equipment was "owned" by the telephone company (which allowed them to "rubber in" -- remember that when getting a 'free' phone for a two-year agreement, who 'owns' it? -- i digress). Later laws allowed the recipients to "own" their own equipment and ultimately led to the reasonable logic in my mentioned key element above.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
If you read the article, you'll note the following sentence: "The court did not need to rule on whether the state university e-mail servers are public or private." That is, it is not completely clear from a legal standpoint whether the university has total rights on what material gets sent through their servers EVEN IF THEY OWN THEM. The phone company example shows that mere ownership is an insuffient condition for total control and censorship. Yes, the phone company is a common carrier, but it is not completely established that a university isn't subject to at least some of the same issues that a common carrier has, depending
If you read the article, you'll note the following sentence: "The court did not need to rule on whether the state university e-mail servers are public or private." That is, it is not completely clear from a legal standpoint whether the university has total rights on what material gets sent through their servers EVEN IF THEY OWN THEM. The phone company example shows that mere ownership is an insuffient condition for total control and censorship. Yes, the phone company is a common carrier, but it is not completely established that a university isn't subject to at least some of the same issues that a common carrier has, depending on just how it operates its email services, etc. And just because a university has a TOS doesn't mean that that TOS will hold up in court, or can protect the university from these issues. The original point is that *none* of these issues were the basis for the decision. Instead, it was merely that the university did not interfere with whatever First Amendment rights of the spammers.
No, I don't believe your analysis is correct.
Actually, it's not far off.
It certainly isn't true that because it is "your machine" you have the right to block anything that comes to it.
Really? Then why do I have a firewall (block network traffic selectively)? Why do I have "spam filters" on my e-mail?
A phone company may own the phone network and switching equipment, but that doesn't give them the right to block, particularly selectively, what they choose to block.
As a public carrier (as defined by the FCC), no, you're right. But they sure can set so-called Quality of Service metrics, etc. There is nothing stopping them from providing less through bandwidth for traffic and requests originating or terminating outside of their network. What will happen when SBC (or Telestra, BT, DT, et al) decide that they need to hop on the VoIP bandwagon, and, well, their stuff just works better than Vonage, Cisco, etc. VoIP hardware with non-SBC-registered MAC addresses? Hmm..."Quality of Service".
A university may own the student's mailboxes, but that doesn't mean that the university has the right to selectively filter the student's incoming mail.
It may not have the right to filter a particular student's e-mail, but it sure does have the right to filter *all* e-mail messages equally, just like it has the right to filter all employee e-mail, etc. It even has the right to segment off the dorms, student network, etc. from employee/staff/research networks, and deal with them separately. It's the University's network, they can define how it gets used.
My ISP filters my e-mail through its antispam/antivirus software, in addition to my e-mail provider, etc. and Grisoft AV on my computer.
Notice how no university got sued when they started blocking Napster, KaZaa, etc. on the dorm networks. Just like no ISP has gotten sued by a user because their e-mail gets spam-filtered (but they probably do get a non-zero amount of hate mail because either their mailing lists they subscribe to have had their domain black-listed or otherwise determined to be "spam", and have quite a battle not getting them filtered out).
I only wish I could pay the post office to do the same thing to my physical mail box.
With the university, this would be true of the lab machines, but what of the private machines in the dorm?
If the mailbox or mail server is owned by the University, even if the e-mail is ultimately d/l to the student's personal computer, the service is owned by the University.
Notice that the University is not attempting to filter messages from Yahoo, HotMail, GMail, etc., merely e-mail that is processed through their mail servers.
If you really want all that Spam, then by all means get someone to hook you up with a GMail account or set yourself up with a Yahoo account.
While you may own your phone equipment in your house, you do not own anything past the demarc (i.e., the phone box on the outside of your house).
No different really that Comcast owns your cable TV decoder, or DirecTV/DishNetwork owns the card in your satellite decoder.
If, like most companies, the student's University-supplied e-mail is hosted by Exchange, then the University sure can filter that email before Outlook gets it onto the student's computer.
Some university's provide dialup numbers, charge for Internet access and even sell that access to those outside the university. In other words, they begin to look and smell like an ISP, hence a common carrier. Don't think this has ever been tested in court...
Only recently have laws been put into place that fully legitimizes an ISP (a common carrier) to filter and reject spam. The ISP, despite bandwidth issues, may well prefer to give the user/customer software for a firewall and spam control rather than filter at the ISP itself. Why ? because the last thing a common carrier wants to do is to filter and control content. That jeopardizes its status as a common carrier. Pretty soon, parents, DOJ and god-knows will ask that ISPs filter out porn, "terrorist" content, subversive material, and request IP addresses of those who access that stuff... and back logs and back emails of people the FBI wants to target, etc. Its a slippery slope, so ISPs are better off not touching anything and leaving the filtering to the customer.If the mailbox or mail server is owned by the University, even if the e-mail is ultimately d/l to the student's personal computer, the service is owned by the University.
:)
Exactly. You got it. I had just supported the phone technology using some history in addition to answering my own question. Thanks, though.
I would like to add that with the email service line of thought and enforcing the phone analogy (some grandfathering applies here) that with the advance of technology to support voicemail and screening calls with answering machines, voice had become a service as well, not requiring the end user equipment to utilize the product...another key element that enabled the telemarketers to come back and ring you at dinnertime.
No different really that Comcast owns your cable TV decoder, or DirecTV/DishNetwork owns the card in your satellite decoder.
Which is why they try to argue that extra connections in the house should cost more, it's their equipment that is activated. I agree, it "should" be at the d-marc, but the providers disagree. I believe this was first attempted when broadband was becoming actively popular, but soon the customers right to install their own equipment overrode any of that noise and providers now offer instructions to setting up a home network.
While you may own your phone equipment in your house, you do not own anything past the demarc (i.e., the phone box on the outside of your house).
I agree. I was actually supporting this truth...the phone company reserves their right to not complete the connection for calls to their network if their switches are receiving numerous connection requests from one source (overload aside) and for any other reason according to the "these policies can change anytime" clause. Email providers reserve the right to block the same...which is why the spammers lost.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
Speaking as a European - 100% of my spam is American, not a single Asian or European originated message in years. I really hate getting ads for morgages and services that I can't possibly need or geographically use. Of course with the introduction of my whitelist all the spam disappeared! No more cialis! :)
And in the rest of the world (non-Common law countries) there's no distinction as "person"/citizen includes both legal entities and people.
First; You din't read it before you signed ?!
Second; as a system admin at a small company, and as a college student -- at least in Norway your mail is considered private, and even if it's easy for the it staff to monitor, read, filter or even alter user mail -- neither is accepted or even legal without user consent.
It's even common courtesy to allow an opt-out option from autmatic spam filtering, most commonly done by flagging the mail (eg with spamassasin), and then letting the user do the actual filtering.
All that being said, just about everyone are happy to have their mail spamfiltered. But content filtered ?! How would you even go about blocking "non school related mails" or "non work related mail" ? Show me a filter that correctly handles research data in Urdu AND blocks love letters in Urdu, and I'll be very impressed. I'd still think it's a horrible idea to block mail based on actual content.But maybe you meant that you assume the agreement allows the college to block spam in order to reduce the load on it's servers. It's hardly the same as blocking "non school related emails". Can hardly think of any field of study where email isn't considered a neccessary tool, both for socializing and studying.
I can sell you my address, but heck if I have a post box there.
Valid emails are one thing, but allowing you to use MY EMAIL SERVER? My shiney email server? Heck no. Find some other way of using their email addresses!
Personally, I realise that these email addresses are pwned by the uni, and the students could probably get rammed up the ass with as many 'notices' and spam as they like (my uni covered this well). So selling the email addresses is not that bad... well it is... but they didn't sell out the students per se.
I have full rights over my email server.
We had free printing until someone printing 20000 flyers for local restaurants.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
As dating service mail is non-academic use, the ITS would be within their contract if they blocked it; they wouldn't have been within their contract if they shut down my account for it, as that blocks my academic use.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
I don't know about America, but here in Finland it's enough to put the text "no commercials" (in finnish, of course "ei mainoksia") somewhere visible in your mailbox. I don't know if it actually has legal power, but the carriers are only too happy to lessen the amount of crap they have to carry - their wages aren't affected, after all.
Perhaps you should should try this too ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Wouldn't one of the clues be when you and 10,000 of your fellow college mates are receiving love letters in Urdu?
Well, unless your college is in Pakistan it should raise some red flags.
Most post offices here in the USA have a "no circulars" option on PO Boxes. It's simple enough for them to see while sorting, but for mail delivery to the home, it's more difficult because of the nature of getting mail delivery.
But I am not surprised that younger Texans don't either. Must be the education level, or something to do with horses. Now I did research this and Bo Peep's Dating was able to win exactly the same case in Montana. I won't get in to the details here.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
A phone company is NOT obligated to offer service to everyone. I wish you communists would get off of this kick.
If a phone company wants to be over-zealous and be a bunch of blocking nazis so their customers can't use their service to the level they wish they could, then guest what? The customers go to someone else. Capitalism solves all of our problems if we stop this idiotic ideal of "If someone is in a certain industry they MUST offer their service to everyone" If they don't want to make that money then its their loss.
Most junk mail in Finland is delivered by companies specializing in it. Regular postal service only carries adressed post, not mass-mailings. Sure, there's some adressed junk mail too, but it costs a lot more to send, because the real postal carriers get real pay - junk mail carriers recruit children who are too young to get a decent job, and pay pennies.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In the US the law generally recognizes that business email is owned by the business, and it is not considered private. (The one exception is the state of Connecticut which requires an electronic monitoring policy to read, but not to filter, mail.) This is why I always recommend to people that they don't say anything in email that they wouldn't want their parents to see on the 6:00 news.
I do not know how the law applies to universities however since the servers that host the mail and the facilities that transport the mail are owned by the universities, I would think that they have the right to filter incoming mail however they wish.
Tim
When asked how long this ruling will be in effect, the Court simply replied: "Til Gabriel blows his horn."
[/rimshot]
I think the notion of a general attitude applied to a group of people is bigotry.
So referring to the Nazis as genocidal is bigotry? Riiight.
You know, this little exchange got me thinking. Usually, those who criticize my sig tend to be a little racist themselves. But you seem to be OK. Or, at least, that's how I felt until I visited your blog and found this gem:
Boy, do you have a racist chip on your shoulder. Do you really think life would be easier for you if you were coloured? You think nowadays black people have an easy ride? And you think that you've had it tough because they've been given "your job"?
If this is your perception, I invite you -- when or if you eventually manage to get a proper job -- to count up how many dark-skinned people you work with. See how many have taken your job, you bigoted arsehole.How's the aeronautical engineering program at Oxford?
I've no idea. But their physics programme, plus the astronomy PhD programme at University of London, is a great start to a career in space astrophysics -- culminating with NASA cutting me my paycheck. Whereas your chosen career, in designing machines to efficiently kill dark-skinned foreigners (think Iraq, Afghanistan), appears from your blog to have stalled.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
That must be why Linux wasn't released until 1991...
Help a poor college student. Send a couple cents via paypal to chucks86@gmail.com
You are comparing a sender pays system (postal service) to a mostly receipient pays system (email). Such an analogy breaks down over this fundamental difference.
Imagine a postal service in which the sender can send all he wants, and it is the recipient that must pay for it, even if he does not want it, either through direct charges to the recipient, or through taxes if this is a government postal system. To mass marketers, this would be the ideal dream (especially if it also included the cost of printing and stuffing envelopes). Your mailbox would be stuff full every day with great offers from thousands of companies that are sure you will want this (which in reality only a few people do). Because you would be paying for it, not the mass marketer, they have no incentive to limit sending to just those people that really do want it. So you end up having to pay for hundreds of pieces of mail you don't want, and have to spend the time sifting through it all to find what mail you really do want.
As long as there is some means for the marketers to get their message out, they do have free speech. Web ads, TV ads, newspaper ads, radio ads, and those ugly billboards along the roadways, are all valid means of free speech. And so is printing up your message and hiring people to walk around stuffing them in door frames and under windshield wipers (to the extent this does not cause any damage or involves tresspassing).
Email is simply not a medium for free speech, unless the recipient specifically wants (to pay for) it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I work for technology companies in marketing/product management. Born and raised American.
It now makes sense why you come to believe in corporations having more responsibility for their actions/misdeeds.
I actually share the same opinion, but american public opinion isn't really going this way and I'm not up for the battle. It's amazing because it just hurts the average american more every day. I don't really understand why they want to make themselves poorer every day and give it all to the people that already have too much. Go figure....
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
No I did not read it, because I pretty much knew what it stated. After reading your post I took a quick look at it and here is what you might be interested in:
B. University Property. E-mail services are extended for the sole use of University faculty, staff, students and other appropriately authorized users to accomplish tasks related to and consistent with the University's mission. University e-mail systems and services are University facilities, resources and property as those terms are used in University policies and applicable law. Any e-mail address or account assigned by the University to individuals, sub-units, or functions of the University, is the property of the University.
I was given the email account for academic purposes. If you want to filter out non-school related email it is simple, have the server only accept emails from its own domain. If every student, teacher, staffer has an email from said domain then they can all communicate within the university system. Here is the policy and guideline document if you want to have some fun.
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ELECTRONIC MAIL POLICY
You're welcome to draw whatever mistaken impressions you wish from my blog. You've obviously got a template you're fitting me into, and I know better than to try to correct your mis-impressions.
I don't know whether it would be easier if I were colored. I do know it would have been easier to get a scholarship, which would have saved me having to work two jobs to get through school, which I guess would probably have allowed me to spend more time on my schoolwork, which would have improved my GPA, and maybe gotten a job in the industry.
For the record, I'm interested in designing civil transports. Unfortunately, the only way to get the expertise to do that, is to work for military contractors. I have no interest in killing dark skinned foreigners, and I happen to think that the current foreign policy of the United States is pretty awful. But hey, I wouldn't want to upset your preconceptions, so you feel free to ignore that part.
I'm not bitter about my situation. I chose it, and I am satisfied with the results. My point is simply this: The world isn't giving ANYBODY handouts, unless one happens to come from a family of privilege and power. I think it's pretty silly to assert that, just because I'm white, I have it easier than anybody else. That's the attitude I was responding to in that blog entry, and I stand by it.
Congratulations on your success in your chosen field of endeavor. Do you think that makes you somehow superior to me?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
A phone company is NOT obligated to offer service to everyone. I wish you communists would get off of this kick. If a phone company wants to be over-zealous and be a bunch of blocking nazis...
So, you're saying the United States is a communist country? Red USA?
Either that or you were ingorant of the common-carrier laws of the United States. Either way, you're an ignorant troll.
Do you think that makes you somehow superior to me?
I don't know where you got that idea from. Maybe it is your own insecurities showing through. Whatever.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
You're getting good at this projection thing. Do you need a hug?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Or was that Sin-dee?
She was a woman who teamed up with Jeb when I was at Oberlin in the mid 1980's. Not exactly fertile ground.
S.C.: "Does your mother know you eat SPERM?"
member of the crowd: "uh, persumably she figured it out when I came out in high school."
You're getting good at this projection thing. Do you need a hug?
Nah, my large NASA paycheck is adequate compensation for the empty loneliness.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Very glad to hear it. It's important to measure your value only by the size of your paycheck.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In the U.S., all that "junk mail" actually subsidizes the cost of carrying letters and packages.
The cost to transport a letter from one end of the country to the other is actually significantly more than 37, but the difference is made up by presorted bulk mail, which is billed at a slightly higher rate than the actual cost of carriage and sorting. Basically the Post Office gives a discount for presorted mail, which is slightly LESS than the actual cost savings to the Post Office (because of employee time saved, I suppose) as a result of the presorting.
If all the junk mail sent via the USPS just stopped flowing tomorrow, the system would run out of money pretty quickly. People don't send enough letters and packages to keep the system going by themselves.
I have no idea how the postal system in Finland works, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it probably involves a large injection of public tax-derived funds. In the U.S., the Post Office is entirely self-funded, and has been since 1982 (cite). One exception to this might be the security measures put in place after the 2001 anthrax scares, but I'm not sure.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."