On Tue, Nov 07, 2000 at 10:50:25AM -0800, Eric Murray wrote:
On Mon, Nov 06, 2000 at 08:37:31PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
I agree with Jim that anti-spam laws are bad in principle; in practice they're usually worse :-) Some kinds of cypherpunks technology don't involve the law; some do. For instance, user-supplied filters can trigger libel laws ("Hey, your filter called me a SPAMMER! I'll SUE!").
Maybe I'm too limited in my thinking, but I don't see this actually happening with usr-level filtering. Mostly for the simple reason that it doesn't make sense to send anything back to the spammer.
Even if they did, there's no argument for defamation liability - all of the popular flavors of defamation (slander, libel, invasion of privacy) require that the defamatory content be made available to third parties (e.g., not the plaintiff nor the defendant). User-configured spam blockers don't create risk of defamation (or interference with contract, etc.) liability - but supplying block lists to other users does. However, there's a line of caselaw which says that there's an exception to traditional defamation liability, where the speaker acts with a good purpose, to warn others of a perceived danger; perhaps that would be a useful approach for the MAPS people to take. They're the ones with their necks on the chopping blocks. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com PO Box 897 Oakland CA 94604