I guess if you wanted to get extreme, you could say that garbage-mail =
eats up your connect time. If you sent someone a large number of binary =
attachents, they might not be able to clean it up easily. It sure could =
tie up their connection.
I bet, though, that are are lawyers that would just love to argue this =
to death (preferably theirs).
----------
From: MegaZone[SMTP:megazone@livingston.com]
Sent: Friday, September 06, 1996 13:28 PM
To: portmaster-users@livingston.com
Subject: Re: Competition (fwd)
Once upon a time Mark Wilson shaped the electrons to say...
>According to my Hayes Century manual; the Communications Act of 1991
>forbids unsolicitated facsimiles. Facimiles are defined as any
>communication that is machine reproducable. Email 'could' fall under =
that.
>If Hayes put it in the manual I'm sure they had a reason.
>
>I've also had numerous 'spamm' victims quote this to me over the years.
The act refers to facsimile machines. The act defines fascimile =
machines
as a device for transmitting or receiving data trasmissions over a=20
telephone line and rendering them to paper.
The logic then follows that hey, a computer can be used to receive a
fax and print it, therefore it is a facsimile machine.
To date the courts have not seen fit to agree with this logic, and don't
define computers as facsimile machines.
Frankly I agree with the courts and think it is very, very weak logic.
I've been backwards and forwards over this one as until recently I was a
USEnet moderator and this was a BIG discussion on the moderators mailing =
list. We even had lawyers participating. The end decision was =
basically,
you could *try* to use this, but odds are your case will either be =
thrown
out or their defense would shred you into itty bitty pieces - and in any
case it would cost a lot.
-MZ
-- Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs Phone: 800-458-9966 510-426-0770 FAX: 510-426-8951 = megazone@livingston.com For support requests: support@livingston.com = <http://www.livingston.com/>=20 Snail mail: 6920 Koll Center Parkway #220, Pleasanton, CA 94566 See me in person: Internet Expo, Boston, MA, October 16-17, Booth 422 = ;-)