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.
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!
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.
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
That's strange you got such a significant positive impact. Personally, most of my spam (a whopping 37%) comes from the USA, mostly from cable modems/DSL lines. Excluding Russia and Japan, the rest of asia combined only contributes a paltry 9% of the total. European countries make up most of the other 54%
Random and weird software I've written.
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. :(
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!
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
(not that I agree with a business having ANY rights just because they're a 'person', but here goes...)
Joe Shitface gets a license to operate his business. It's a sole proprietorship... meaning the only one in charge of it, Joe Shitface, is a PERSON who DOES have guaranteed rights. Since he doesn't have a fictitious name license, he's gotta call it Joe Shitface's Get Laid Website. He then gets this license, and calls it LonghornSingles.com. It's still run by Mr. Shitface.
Months down the line, he incorporates it, because being a slimy SPAM dog is profitable! But, he still holds 100% of the non-public stock, so he's CEO, President, and all that happy bullshit at once. So, if he runs every aspect of the company, why shouldn't it have free speech rights like him?
That's their argument.