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Re: spam

2003-05-27 14:13:18
Uh, no. You need to read the page cited by Eric Hall.
http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2003/20030321.asp

I read the ruling, too.  The district court said that the government
failed to satisfy the tests for restriction of commercial speech, as
outlined in Central Hudson. The appeals court reversed.

However, this is an interesting case, since American Blast Fax was not
represented in the Appeal, and had apparently gone out of business.
Generally, when one party does't show up, a case is granted to the other
party by default. Such a victory does not make precedent, and is not
binding on any other case.

Not being a lawyer, I can't tell you what that means with respect to an
appeal. I will ask though.

The central point of review is the District courts finding that
"technological changes had eliminated the burdens imposed on recipients of
unwanted fax advertising".  The circuit court essentially reversed this
finding, and used it to reverse the decision.

In other words, cost plays a big part in the decision.  But as has been so
roundly demonstrated, the cost associated with email is practically
non-existant, and does not ever cost any user more than $1 or $2 per
month, which they pay for email services.

This is substantially different from the case with faxes. And it does seem
to be a valid arguement that if technology does eliminate the burdens
imposed, then the junk fax law could be reversed.

In the case of spam, there is no cost _shifting_ whatsoever, since by
definition, everyone pays their own way. Even spammers.  Unlike faxes, the
receipt of a spam does not increase the cost of the recipient's email.
Email is usually fixed cost, and flat rate.  Even when one pays by the
octet, the cost of a spam is in the millionths of a cent, which I think
is less than the cost to carry out the trash of one junk postal mail.

                --Dean

On Tue, 27 May 2003, John Stracke wrote:

Eric A. Hall wrote:

on 5/26/2003 5:17 PM Dean Anderson wrote:


Junk fax law, overturned as being unconstitutional restriction on
speech.


You keep bringing this up. Please cite. As I said in another message, the
only ruling I know of that would support this was overturned on appeal.

And the court whose ruling was overturned (I read the ruling) had made
the same sort of error Dean is making: assuming that the only costs
involved were those of physical resources (paper or disk space).

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|John Stracke      |jstracke(_at_)centive(_dot_)com                   |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com                 |
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