Spam.com sues isp.com for "censorship and the right to free speech"
In the United States, at least, isp.com cites 47 USC 230 and a variety
of precedents that confirm that the First Amendment applies to the
government and not to private parties, gets the case dismissed with
predjudice, and is awarded court costs because the case was without
merit.
I realize that laws are different in other countries, but in the US
the law gives provides broad immunity from liability due to good faith
efforts to filter offensive material. The law was originally written
with web porn filters in mind, but it's broadly written and applies to
spam filtering as well. Section 8(c) of the new CAN SPAM act which
will be signed into law any day now confirms that ISPs may have "a
policy of declining to transmit, route, relay, handle, or store
certain types of electronic mail messages." Being sued for good faith
spam filtering simply isn't an issue here.
Since this is not a legal discussion and as far as I know none of the
participants (including me) are lawyers or otherwise qualified to
opine on the law, I'd appreciate it if people would refrain from
discussing legal topics except insofar as they bear directly on some
activity of ASRG, identify the country whose laws apply, and cite a
law or precedent other than "well, it might happen" for authority.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)iecc(_dot_)com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet
for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web
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