The law you cited refers only to civil damages resulting from
criminal activity. In order to press a civil suit under this law, the
defendant would first need to be convicted of criminal activity falling
under (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) of subsection (a)(5)(B), which in turn
requires a violation of (a)(5)(A) which requires unauthorized access to a
protected computer.
The administrator doing the blocking would be in the clear, since
they are authorized to access this computer (and are in fact authorized to
change this information, even if you disagree with the change.) The
provider of a blocking list would not have accessed this computer at all,
since they did not make the change. The desires of the intended recipient
do not matter at all under this law, as they do not own the computer on
which the change was made.
If something has been done which violates a service agreement, you
can press a civil suit based on that agreement, which falls under contract
law and has nothing at all to do with 18 U.S.C. 1030.
I am not a lawyer, although I did spend much time doing legal
research for one. This is actually an extremely simple law, and I can say
with a fair degree of certainty that it does not cover what you think it
does.
If you need legal advice, talk to a lawyer, you may have a civil
suit if this filtering violates a contract you have with the party in
question. 18 U.S.C. 1030 however, does not apply here.
I hope this was helpful.
-Daniel Pelstring
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org [mailto:owner-ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On
Behalf Of Mike S
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 11:45 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: SMTP Minimum Retry Period - Proposal To Modify Mx
At 10:32 PM 1/9/2004, Ken Raeburn wrote...
Not in any mail I've seen so far, but the other traffic since implies I've
missed something. Investigating that... my apologies.
18 U.S.C. 1030
In any case, the quotations I've seen suggest you believe that the blocking
is done without authorization.
That is correct. Understand that I am NOT referring to UCE/spam. In the case
of UCE/Spam, I will stipulate that the intended recipient may indeed have
authorized upstream blocking/filtering. It is, however, irrational and
incorrect to argue that the recipient has authorized blocking/filtering of
email replies sent in direct response to queries they have sent. RBL/DUL
makes no distinction between these types of email, and indiscriminately
causes both types to be blocked. One cannot argue that general "best effort"
or "no guarantees" terms of service cover this situation, since the blocking
is known and deliberate.
As I said in my previous mail, I suspect the service agreement is likely
to provide for it;
I can only speak for the ISP agreements I've been a party to, and they do
NOT authorize any upstream filtering or blocking.
And I suspect the receiving computer to which "damage" would be done would
be the ISP's mail server; presumably none of this is interfering with the
transmission between the ISP's mail server and the customer's machine.
It is interfering with communications between sender and recipient, which is
exactly what the cited law prohibits. The maintainer of the MX has publicly
agreed to accept mail destined for the domain (by publishing an MX record).
Blocking/refusing/filtering email bound for a protected system is a
violation of U.S. law, unless specific authorization has been granted to do
so, which has not occurred (see above).