On Tue, 22 Nov 1994, Adam Philipp wrote:
(For one thing, the ECPA protects the mail, and allows the machine owner to adopt a "hands off" stance. For another, an "abused account" can simply and quickly be killed, with new ones taking its place! Think of the benefits.)
I'm not sure the ECPA provides the protection you want here. I'll have to look again, and do not assert this as certain, because I'm only pulling of the top of my head what I remember from a quick scan of the Steve Jackson Games opinion.
Anyone want to repost it? I recall it limited the ECPA in some interesting way, and I remember being offened, and not surprised at the narrow reading.
The ECPA offers two levels of protection to e-mail, transmitted e-mail and stored e-mail. The some mail on Illuminati (Steve Jackson's BBS) had been sent but had not been read by the intended recipients. The the first trial found that the there had been a violation of the ECPA with regard to the section on stored mail, but not on transmitted mail. It narrowly defined the transmitted section to include only interception contemporaneous with transmission with the e-mail. Sine the mail had been sitting around on the hard disk, the court refused to call it interception.
Yes, this is what I meant exactly. I see it has less application to Mr. May's post than I thought. I only remembered a narrow reading of interception. Thanks for clairifying.
If anyone really cannot find a copy of the ECPA I can go search for my ASCII edition, but right now I only have a hard copy lying around somewhere on this desk.
No no, I wanted the Jackson Opinion. My fault for not being clear, but you cleared it up.
Adam
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