Court rules for Intel in mass-mail case

Rudolf writes "Here in Sacramento, CA, a court has ruled that an ex-employee of Intel does NOT have the right to send mass-mail to current Intel employees. The judge ruled that "The mere connection of Intel's e-mail system with the Internet does not convert it into a public forum." The court finds that Hamidi's e-mails are not protected speech." The Sacramento Bee has the story here. " I'm torn on this one-I'd hate to get the mail from this guy, but the EFF (quoted in the article) has a good point as well.

Comments

Nope, you are wrong

[Kaa]

The rights of Intel to control their own servers is not in doubt. In fact, I wonder why Intel didn't implement a global killfile across its mail servers instead of going to court -- that would have been the easiest way to deal with the problem. Remember the discussion on /. some time ago -- your right to talk does not imply my obligation to listen.

However, the issue in this case was different. The question was, did the guy have the right to SEND e-mail. The right of Intel to block it was not in doubt, but Intel wanted the sending of e-mail to stop, and the judge supported them.

This is rather interesting: the ruling implies that the owner of a mail server has rights with regard to people sending mail to his server. Leaving aside the denial-of-service attacks, I belive this is new and I don't really like it. Think about it: can AOL prohibit you from sending any e-mail to any @aol.com address? Do you want it to be able to?

Kaa

A speech in a public park?

[dmorin]

He likened his actions to making a speech in a public park near Intel? Not even close, methinks. He used Intel's resources (mail servers, etc), which means they should be allowed to determine who gets to use them. It wouldn't cost Intel anything for him to have a speech in the park.

He still has the right to send every one of those employees a good old fashioned US Postal letter. That really *is* a public service. And he'd have to use his own money. I don't think he would have gotten the EFF on his side if he'd said "Hey, I want to spam these folks, but I can't afford the postage. Can you turn this into a free speech issue?" The founding fathers never said you specifically have a right to email.

There is a valid issue hiding in there, that there's a *potential* precedent for a company to single out somebody and say "Ok, you there - we don't like you, you can't use our service." I'm pretty sure a similar case happened many years ago when Compuserve got into a fight with a customer (over some shareware he'd written), so they stopped his service. He sued on the grounds that he had a right to that service (back when CServe was one of the few ways you could get service). I can't remember the outcome of that one, though.
I think I remember the guy winning, with the courts agreeing that, like phone service, you can't cut the person off because you don't like what they're saying (just like if you call your mom and say "Bell Atlantic sucks", they can't decide to stop selling you service).

I have a problem with someone trying to limit my ability to communicate over the net, yes - just like I have a problem with non-secretaries who say "Can I ask what this is about?" before deciding whether to put my call through. I don't have a problem with a company instituting solutions on the order of "If you send 30,000 emails through our server in 10 minutes, we'll bar you for life."