Corporations do pretty terrible things everyday, but they are mostly *legal* terrible things. What you suggest is fraud. They don't work that way.
Corporations, particularly large corporations, also do a great many illegal things every day. One household name corporation in the US has even committed numerous murders. Unfortunately such corporations always have friends in high places (or can buy them if they don't have them) who can make the problem go away, and even in the unlikely event that they get charged, they can afford armies of the best available lawyers to ensure they never get convicted.
I wish I would have known that my emails would have held up in court, I don't even think her parents had a clue what was going on. Ovbiously, it was partially my fault for being so trusting, but I found it hard to believe that someone I had talked to so extensively (probably 50k worth of email) would be so dishonest.
That an agreement reached by email can be a valid and enforceable contract is a no-brainer. The difficulty is an evidentiary one - that is, the court must be satisfied that there has been no tampering with the messages. As long as the court is satisfied that this is the case, the email would clearly evidence any agreement reached.
Information wants to be free, but my mail client does not want to be chock-full of herbal pot alternative spam.
The problem with Gilmore (and the EFF, which is Gilmore's mouthpiece), is that he first got involved in lobbying to get copyright for software through (so people wouldn't copy his software), and since then he's basically opposed every single law relating to technology that has been proposed. It doesn't matter if the law is a good one, or if it's beneficial to the geek community - if it's a law relating to technology, he'll oppose it.
Certainly there are some things that need to be opposed, but with the EFF there is no discretion - if it's a law that relates to technology, it must be bad. Except copyright law because it helped Gilmore make his millions.
Gilmore and the EFF have long since ceased to represent the groups and interests they claim. They are utterly without relevance, although they seem to be able to con a few people to donate to them. Frankly, donating to the EFF is a bad idea - if Gilmore wants a personal mouthpiece for irrationally opposing all tech law, he can pay for it himself (and can afford to do so) without begging others to subsidise him.
Once your stuff has been sold through auction you cannot claim it back.
But you can still take an action against the auctioneer for conversion and recover the value of the stuff (it's irrelevant that they didn't know the stuff was stolen).
The upshot is that they were declared unfit parents and all 4 or 5 kids taken away. After leaping thru various flaming legal hoops, they finally got their kids back, on these conditions:
Part of the problem was that they probably played the game by the government's rules. Don't - it's not necessary, and if you play by their rules you can bet they'll win because they've set it up that way anyway.
Instead, go your nearest superior court and talk to them about getting a writ of Habeas Corpus. These things get dealt with basically immediately, and then the onus is on the government to prove their case. You don't have to deal with the petty bureaucrats, and since they are literally required to bring the kids to the court, the kids get a chance to tell their story.
At the end of the hearing, the court will almost certainly order the kids to be released to you, and you can ask the court for an injunction to keep the SOBs the hell away.
Re:OT: Modern Judges
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
But you're the only one I've seen on Slashdot, or talked to in person, who seems to think that "preferred form" isn't fairly obvious.
It's not so much that "preferred form" is obvious, it's that "the preferred form" is obvious. Note, not "a preferred form". The common meaning of "the preferred form" allows for exactly one form to fit this description. In other words, out of all of the available forms, the one that is the best possible form for modification is the one that has to be distributed. Quite clearly, if the company is continuing to modify the program in form X, then form X is, prima facie, the only possible form that fits the phrase "the preferred form".
The only way this could be negatived (yes, that is a verb in lawyerspeak) is by demonstrating that the form used for development is a form not convenient to others, and the translated form is actually preferable for those others.
IANALY, but I did top the year last year, and this is a simple question of interpretation that a first year law student could deal with.
She keeps throwing those idiot catalogues in my driveway. I've already informed this woman that I am not interested in this crap and don't want them on 3 different occasions. What can I do?
You can file an action for trespass to land in your nearest magistrate's court. File for both nominal damages and an injunction. This is a no-brainer. You'll need some pleadings - plead as follows:
that on Day, Month DD, YYYY, the defendant did intentionally, and after the express retraction by the plaintiff of any implied consent that may have existed, throw advertising material onto real property in the possession of the plaintiff;
that this is a tangible intrusion that amounts to trespass to real property; and
the plaintiff seeks an order for damages, costs and an injunction to prevent further trespasses to the property
One other thing - the advertising material would need to have been thrown onto the driveway inside the property boundary - if it's outside that boundary, it may not in your possession, and even if it could be argued it is you'll need a lawyer to argue it for you.
Don't use physical force (as one poster suggested) unless she actually crosses into your property herself. If she does, you can use as much physical force as is necessary to eject her.
Wow, a maximum of 25MPH. This thing could change everything. It could be bigger than the Segway!
There are other related systems that perform at much higher speed. My personal favourite is SkyTran, which is a MagLev system that operates at up to 150MPH, doesn't suffer from congestion, and because it doesn't have to stop at intersections, or to pick up and set down other passengers, it's actually much quicker and more convenient than any other form of transportation, including private cars.
And instead of running on inconvenient roads, you just need to build a special 1.5 meter track to your destination. My, this IS cheaper and easier than driving!
The track for these systems costs heaps less than the same distance worth of road, and has less wear-and-tear (especially in the case of SkyTran). A city implementing this instead of just blindly building more roads will actually turn a profit on it within a decade.
What's more, the absence of drivers means no speeding, running red lights, no pedestrians getting knocked down, no drunk drivers.
These systems could quite easily replace the automobile, and they bring so many benefits there's no reason why cities shouldn't be planning things this way now.
The EFF has been wrestling with this issue and come to the conclusion that trespass is a risky doctrine to use in the fight against spam.
The EFF's reasoning is bogus, and relies on manifest ignorance of the rules of this tort. Of course you're about to find that out just how wrong in the Supreme Court of California.
While the United States (except Louisiana) uses a common law tradition, there was a major effort undertaken after the Revolution to codify common law.
I suspect your confusing criminal law (which has been widely codified) and torts law (which has not). Torts law by its nature is not particularly amenable to codification, and the torts law used in 49 states of the US is still Common Law, and is still influenced by what goes on in other jurisditions.
As others have pointed out, this is a Common Law rule not a Statute, and it's a lot older than 1610, dating back to the 1400s. And it's a civil (torts) matter, not a criminal one.
2. Potentially Applies Throughout the Common Law World.
The most significant cases for this are The UK (except Scotland), the US (except Louisiana), Canada (except possibly Quebec), Australia and New Zealand.
3. Only Applies Where Implied Consent is Negated.
There is clearly implied consent for person-to-person email, even if inadvertantly misdirected. The assertion in this case is that there is no implied consent for spam.
4. This is NOT Going to Cause Paranoid Problem X.
The issue of implied consent, which is dealt with by the courts in remarkably sensible ways, prevents every single absurd outcome suggested here. This will only nail things that society considers abusive practice.
5. You Can't Draw Conclusions of Law Based Solely on a Brief Article in the Popular Press.
It takes other things, like, for example, knowledge of the way courts interpret things, and in the case of Common Law, full knowledge of all the rules involved (which are many) to draw conclusions with any validity.
I propose CVS is a part of this solution. I would also recommend code reviews by three independant parties before a branched segment of code becomes part of the main tree.
Alternatively, since Linus still wants to maintain control over everything that goes into the kernel, he should establish other people as the first line of review, preferably assigning people one or two areas of kernel expertese and having a patch that passes multiple areas having to pass somebody from each area of expertese.
The purpose of this is not so much to approve submissions, but to reject the crud (and hopefully get it corrected) before it gets to Linus. Then by the time it gets to Linus, he should have to spend less time because (1) fewer things will probably get through the process at all and (2) by the time something gets through, it should already be of sufficient quality that he only has to deal with it the one time.
"If you ban me from this type of medium, you have severely limited my ability to enter into the marketplace," said Jerry Cerasale of the Direct Marketing Association.
This is revealing, however the real text of the interview is more so:
Interviewer: I'm calling regarding Congressional action on spam.
Jerry Cerasale: If you ban me from this type of medium, you have severely limited my ability to enter into the marketplace.
I: But surely with all the ads for porn, casinos and viagra substitutes that you'd be competing with, it's not going to be of any use to you anyway.
JC: You're not listening. I said if you ban me from entering the marketplace. You can ban everybody else.
I: So you're saying you want to ban everybody except Jerry Cerasale from using spam?
JC: No, I want to ban unethical marketers from using spam.
I: How do you define unethical marketers?
JC: They're the ones that forge stuff and won't honor remove requests.
I: So won't they just start following that law and you'll still have the volume problem?
JC: No, because they're unethical marketers.
I: So who are the ethical marketers
JC: They're the DMA members
I: So if the unethical marketers join the DMA do they become ethical marketers?
JC: Of course.
I: Even if they still forge and don't honor remove requests?
JC: Yes. If they join the DMA, then what they are doing is ethical marketing.
I: Surely all the spammers will just join the DMA then and they can all spam.
JC: That's OK.
I: But then won't email be useless for everybody because of the volume? After all, there's got to be hundred of millions of potential marketers out there who might want to use it.
JC: Yes.
I: So you're opposed to laws that will make spam unusable for marketing?
JC: Yes.
I: But you realise that if the laws aren't passed, spam will be unusable for anything.
JC: Yes.
I: Including marketing.
JC: Yes.
I: So really your opposition to laws banning spam achieves nothing to protect it for marketing, and just succeeds in destroying it for everybody.
JC: That's right - if me and my DMA buddie's can't use it for our purposes, then nobody can use it for any purposes.
I: Isn't that a little childish.
JC: Well since they won't play by my rules I would take by bat and ball and go home, but I don't own the bat or the ball, so the only way I can stop them from playing is by destroying the bat and the ball.
I'll never cease to be amazed by the contortions Americans will go to to try to say something isn't an arrest.
Webster's definition seems to agree with the rest of the world - if you (as an individual) are physically stopped by authorities and cease to be capable of your exercise of freedom of movement (even for a brief duration), you have been arrested. You con't even have to be put into a vehicle or taken to a place of detention to be arrested. You don't have to be charged or indicted to have been arrested.
If they can't do anything about broadcast radio propaganda etc, why should they be able to claim jurisdiction over web traffic? The parallels are pretty close.
This story is pretty bogus - the courts have not been saying that defamation is always actionable where it's read. It's only in very specific cases where it can be actionable where read - notably in cases where the plaintiff can show the content was affirmatively directed to places including the place where it was read.
For example, in the Dow Jones case in Australia, they had paying subscribers who had paid by credit card and the service thus had access to reliable information on the country they were delivering to. The Victorian court held that this was analogous to sending the journals by snail mail to Australia.
An appeal in the Dow Jones case is currently pending in the High Court (the ultimate court of appeal in Australia), and may even be overturned to that extent.
What part of "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" don't you understand?
They certainly understand it a lot better than you do - these cases are all based on Common Law, which was made by the courts, most of it predating the United States constitution. Congress had nothing to do with it.
The court ruled Hamidi's e-mails basically amounted to trespassing... "We were very pleased. Our view is that this was the equivalent of spam,"
Well, which is it? Trespassing is illegal, and spam isn't, except in California
It's both. They were referring to earlier cases where courts found that spam is trespassing. As it turns out, spam is illegal under existing Common Law - it's just a lot harder to exercise that than it is to say "here's the statute that says you owe me $500".
Our courts already ruled that we do NOT enforce decisions made by other courts in other nations, and that US citizens don't have to abide by other nations laws while in the US.
Not true - as long as the foreign court exercises due process and there is a sufficient connection between the venue and the act that gives rise to the suit, a US court will enforce the judgement of a foreign court.
it would have been nice if they extended this ruling to include personal web pages, which have been under attack constantly by lawsuits claiming libel and slander, etc.
The ruling, or more correctly the principle of law it's based on, is not specific to message boards. The exact same rules apply to any web site - just be careful to provide appropriate facts, demonstrate some public interest and make sure commentary is clearly delineated.
If the "context" is framed (that's what the disclaimer does; frames the context unambiguously) then this ruling does, in fact, apply.
The content can counter the disclaimer depending on form. For example, if you say "John Doe raped Jane Bloggs", that will be read as an attempt to state facts rather than an opinion. On the other hand, if you say "I believe John Doe raped Jane Bloggs", it's probably a statement of opinion put together with the disclaimer. If you say "Jane Bloggs was raped. In my opinion, the most likely culprit is John Doe", then the disclaimer isn't even necessary.
You need to be careful though - in the United States, opinion is absolutely protected in the same way truth is protected, because "there can be no such thing as a false opinion." Here in New South Wales, opinion has unqualified protection under the Defamation Act 1974 (NSW) s32. But on the Internet you need to make sure that the web site you publish on is in a jurisdiction that has this unqualified protection of opinion, but as long as it's in such a jurisdiction, and you make no attempt to limit the persons who access your web site, a defendant in another jurisdiction won't be able to touch you, even under their local laws (Kostiuk v. Braintech (1999) 171 DLR (4d) 46).
You also need to make sure that when making comment you provide the statement of fact that backs it up. For example, if you say "Joe is a person incompetent to hold a position as a public official", you might be nailed in some places. On the other hand, if you say "Joe cannot read. A person who cannot read is incompetent to hold a position as a public official", the provided it's true that Joe can't read, your OK (in fact in this case you'd be OK most anywhere in the English speaking world).
It's best to make it absolutely clear what part is opinion (or "comment" in defamation terms) and what parts are facts when you're saying something you know somebody might claim is defamatory. This is critical (although less so in the US) - failure to make clear the separation between facts and comments can kill the "fair comment" defence. In some jurisdictions you also have to prove your facts, so it's better to say "I received this email which purports to be from X and says Y" rather than "X sent me this email that says Y".
Of course it's easier just not to say anything bad about other people, but much more boring.
Firstly, conversion is not necessarily theft. Secondly, spam is not conversion (IIRC this was decided in CompuServe Inv v. Cyber Promotions. Spam is, however, a trespass to chattels (from the same case.
And yes, it does look like all spam is in fact illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Corporations, particularly large corporations, also do a great many illegal things every day. One household name corporation in the US has even committed numerous murders. Unfortunately such corporations always have friends in high places (or can buy them if they don't have them) who can make the problem go away, and even in the unlikely event that they get charged, they can afford armies of the best available lawyers to ensure they never get convicted.
That an agreement reached by email can be a valid and enforceable contract is a no-brainer. The difficulty is an evidentiary one - that is, the court must be satisfied that there has been no tampering with the messages. As long as the court is satisfied that this is the case, the email would clearly evidence any agreement reached.
The problem with Gilmore (and the EFF, which is Gilmore's mouthpiece), is that he first got involved in lobbying to get copyright for software through (so people wouldn't copy his software), and since then he's basically opposed every single law relating to technology that has been proposed. It doesn't matter if the law is a good one, or if it's beneficial to the geek community - if it's a law relating to technology, he'll oppose it.
Certainly there are some things that need to be opposed, but with the EFF there is no discretion - if it's a law that relates to technology, it must be bad. Except copyright law because it helped Gilmore make his millions.
Gilmore and the EFF have long since ceased to represent the groups and interests they claim. They are utterly without relevance, although they seem to be able to con a few people to donate to them. Frankly, donating to the EFF is a bad idea - if Gilmore wants a personal mouthpiece for irrationally opposing all tech law, he can pay for it himself (and can afford to do so) without begging others to subsidise him.
But you can still take an action against the auctioneer for conversion and recover the value of the stuff (it's irrelevant that they didn't know the stuff was stolen).
Part of the problem was that they probably played the game by the government's rules. Don't - it's not necessary, and if you play by their rules you can bet they'll win because they've set it up that way anyway.
Instead, go your nearest superior court and talk to them about getting a writ of Habeas Corpus. These things get dealt with basically immediately, and then the onus is on the government to prove their case. You don't have to deal with the petty bureaucrats, and since they are literally required to bring the kids to the court, the kids get a chance to tell their story.
At the end of the hearing, the court will almost certainly order the kids to be released to you, and you can ask the court for an injunction to keep the SOBs the hell away.
It's not so much that "preferred form" is obvious, it's that "the preferred form" is obvious. Note, not "a preferred form". The common meaning of "the preferred form" allows for exactly one form to fit this description. In other words, out of all of the available forms, the one that is the best possible form for modification is the one that has to be distributed. Quite clearly, if the company is continuing to modify the program in form X, then form X is, prima facie, the only possible form that fits the phrase "the preferred form".
The only way this could be negatived (yes, that is a verb in lawyerspeak) is by demonstrating that the form used for development is a form not convenient to others, and the translated form is actually preferable for those others.
IANALY, but I did top the year last year, and this is a simple question of interpretation that a first year law student could deal with.
You can file an action for trespass to land in your nearest magistrate's court. File for both nominal damages and an injunction. This is a no-brainer. You'll need some pleadings - plead as follows:
One other thing - the advertising material would need to have been thrown onto the driveway inside the property boundary - if it's outside that boundary, it may not in your possession, and even if it could be argued it is you'll need a lawyer to argue it for you.
Don't use physical force (as one poster suggested) unless she actually crosses into your property herself. If she does, you can use as much physical force as is necessary to eject her.
There are other related systems that perform at much higher speed. My personal favourite is SkyTran, which is a MagLev system that operates at up to 150MPH, doesn't suffer from congestion, and because it doesn't have to stop at intersections, or to pick up and set down other passengers, it's actually much quicker and more convenient than any other form of transportation, including private cars.
And instead of running on inconvenient roads, you just need to build a special 1.5 meter track to your destination. My, this IS cheaper and easier than driving!
The track for these systems costs heaps less than the same distance worth of road, and has less wear-and-tear (especially in the case of SkyTran). A city implementing this instead of just blindly building more roads will actually turn a profit on it within a decade.
What's more, the absence of drivers means no speeding, running red lights, no pedestrians getting knocked down, no drunk drivers.
These systems could quite easily replace the automobile, and they bring so many benefits there's no reason why cities shouldn't be planning things this way now.
The EFF's reasoning is bogus, and relies on manifest ignorance of the rules of this tort. Of course you're about to find that out just how wrong in the Supreme Court of California.
I suspect your confusing criminal law (which has been widely codified) and torts law (which has not). Torts law by its nature is not particularly amenable to codification, and the torts law used in 49 states of the US is still Common Law, and is still influenced by what goes on in other jurisditions.
As others have pointed out, this is a Common Law rule not a Statute, and it's a lot older than 1610, dating back to the 1400s. And it's a civil (torts) matter, not a criminal one.
2. Potentially Applies Throughout the Common Law World.
The most significant cases for this are The UK (except Scotland), the US (except Louisiana), Canada (except possibly Quebec), Australia and New Zealand.
3. Only Applies Where Implied Consent is Negated.
There is clearly implied consent for person-to-person email, even if inadvertantly misdirected. The assertion in this case is that there is no implied consent for spam.
4. This is NOT Going to Cause Paranoid Problem X.
The issue of implied consent, which is dealt with by the courts in remarkably sensible ways, prevents every single absurd outcome suggested here. This will only nail things that society considers abusive practice.
5. You Can't Draw Conclusions of Law Based Solely on a Brief Article in the Popular Press.
It takes other things, like, for example, knowledge of the way courts interpret things, and in the case of Common Law, full knowledge of all the rules involved (which are many) to draw conclusions with any validity.
Alternatively, since Linus still wants to maintain control over everything that goes into the kernel, he should establish other people as the first line of review, preferably assigning people one or two areas of kernel expertese and having a patch that passes multiple areas having to pass somebody from each area of expertese.
The purpose of this is not so much to approve submissions, but to reject the crud (and hopefully get it corrected) before it gets to Linus. Then by the time it gets to Linus, he should have to spend less time because (1) fewer things will probably get through the process at all and (2) by the time something gets through, it should already be of sufficient quality that he only has to deal with it the one time.
This is revealing, however the real text of the interview is more so:
Interviewer: I'm calling regarding Congressional action on spam.
Jerry Cerasale: If you ban me from this type of medium, you have severely limited my ability to enter into the marketplace.
I: But surely with all the ads for porn, casinos and viagra substitutes that you'd be competing with, it's not going to be of any use to you anyway.
JC: You're not listening. I said if you ban me from entering the marketplace. You can ban everybody else.
I: So you're saying you want to ban everybody except Jerry Cerasale from using spam?
JC: No, I want to ban unethical marketers from using spam.
I: How do you define unethical marketers?
JC: They're the ones that forge stuff and won't honor remove requests.
I: So won't they just start following that law and you'll still have the volume problem?
JC: No, because they're unethical marketers.
I: So who are the ethical marketers
JC: They're the DMA members
I: So if the unethical marketers join the DMA do they become ethical marketers?
JC: Of course.
I: Even if they still forge and don't honor remove requests?
JC: Yes. If they join the DMA, then what they are doing is ethical marketing.
I: Surely all the spammers will just join the DMA then and they can all spam.
JC: That's OK.
I: But then won't email be useless for everybody because of the volume? After all, there's got to be hundred of millions of potential marketers out there who might want to use it.
JC: Yes.
I: So you're opposed to laws that will make spam unusable for marketing?
JC: Yes.
I: But you realise that if the laws aren't passed, spam will be unusable for anything.
JC: Yes.
I: Including marketing.
JC: Yes.
I: So really your opposition to laws banning spam achieves nothing to protect it for marketing, and just succeeds in destroying it for everybody.
JC: That's right - if me and my DMA buddie's can't use it for our purposes, then nobody can use it for any purposes.
I: Isn't that a little childish.
JC: Well since they won't play by my rules I would take by bat and ball and go home, but I don't own the bat or the ball, so the only way I can stop them from playing is by destroying the bat and the ball.
I: Mr Cerasale, thank-you for your time.
JC: My pleasure.
Sure you are. If they are exercising control over you such that your movement is restricted, you have been detained in their custody.
Webster's definition seems to agree with the rest of the world - if you (as an individual) are physically stopped by authorities and cease to be capable of your exercise of freedom of movement (even for a brief duration), you have been arrested. You con't even have to be put into a vehicle or taken to a place of detention to be arrested. You don't have to be charged or indicted to have been arrested.
This story is pretty bogus - the courts have not been saying that defamation is always actionable where it's read. It's only in very specific cases where it can be actionable where read - notably in cases where the plaintiff can show the content was affirmatively directed to places including the place where it was read.
For example, in the Dow Jones case in Australia, they had paying subscribers who had paid by credit card and the service thus had access to reliable information on the country they were delivering to. The Victorian court held that this was analogous to sending the journals by snail mail to Australia.
An appeal in the Dow Jones case is currently pending in the High Court (the ultimate court of appeal in Australia), and may even be overturned to that extent.
Offshoot my butt - Hamidi was spamming.
They certainly understand it a lot better than you do - these cases are all based on Common Law, which was made by the courts, most of it predating the United States constitution. Congress had nothing to do with it.
Defamation is the general term. Libel is defamation in written form. Slander is defamation in spoken form.
Well, which is it? Trespassing is illegal, and spam isn't, except in California
It's both. They were referring to earlier cases where courts found that spam is trespassing. As it turns out, spam is illegal under existing Common Law - it's just a lot harder to exercise that than it is to say "here's the statute that says you owe me $500".
Not true - as long as the foreign court exercises due process and there is a sufficient connection between the venue and the act that gives rise to the suit, a US court will enforce the judgement of a foreign court.
The ruling, or more correctly the principle of law it's based on, is not specific to message boards. The exact same rules apply to any web site - just be careful to provide appropriate facts, demonstrate some public interest and make sure commentary is clearly delineated.
Funny, but not particularly useful. This ruling is entirely unsurprising - in fact it really doesn't rate a mention in the news, legally speaking.
The content can counter the disclaimer depending on form. For example, if you say "John Doe raped Jane Bloggs", that will be read as an attempt to state facts rather than an opinion. On the other hand, if you say "I believe John Doe raped Jane Bloggs", it's probably a statement of opinion put together with the disclaimer. If you say "Jane Bloggs was raped. In my opinion, the most likely culprit is John Doe", then the disclaimer isn't even necessary.
You need to be careful though - in the United States, opinion is absolutely protected in the same way truth is protected, because "there can be no such thing as a false opinion." Here in New South Wales, opinion has unqualified protection under the Defamation Act 1974 (NSW) s32. But on the Internet you need to make sure that the web site you publish on is in a jurisdiction that has this unqualified protection of opinion, but as long as it's in such a jurisdiction, and you make no attempt to limit the persons who access your web site, a defendant in another jurisdiction won't be able to touch you, even under their local laws (Kostiuk v. Braintech (1999) 171 DLR (4d) 46).
You also need to make sure that when making comment you provide the statement of fact that backs it up. For example, if you say "Joe is a person incompetent to hold a position as a public official", you might be nailed in some places. On the other hand, if you say "Joe cannot read. A person who cannot read is incompetent to hold a position as a public official", the provided it's true that Joe can't read, your OK (in fact in this case you'd be OK most anywhere in the English speaking world).
It's best to make it absolutely clear what part is opinion (or "comment" in defamation terms) and what parts are facts when you're saying something you know somebody might claim is defamatory. This is critical (although less so in the US) - failure to make clear the separation between facts and comments can kill the "fair comment" defence. In some jurisdictions you also have to prove your facts, so it's better to say "I received this email which purports to be from X and says Y" rather than "X sent me this email that says Y".
Of course it's easier just not to say anything bad about other people, but much more boring.
IANALY,TINLA
Firstly, conversion is not necessarily theft. Secondly, spam is not conversion (IIRC this was decided in CompuServe Inv v. Cyber Promotions. Spam is, however, a trespass to chattels (from the same case.
And yes, it does look like all spam is in fact illegal.