http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1023310/spam-is-free-speech-claims-spammer
Can spam be considered free speech? Here we have this idea of intellectual freedom. The idea that people should be able to read and say what they want. But is there a limit, and how do we draw a line (if so) so that we do not suffer collateral damage?
The spammer in the article has claimed that penalizing spam has interfered with his free speech. In the same way, should libraries be able to penalize people who are sending spam or spamming libraries for exercising this act of "free speech?"
I feel like this is a sticky situation. If too much of a limit is put on this, it could effect other things as well. But then there is the other side. No one enjoys spam (unless you do, I would love to see an argument enjoying spam), so why would you be against anti-spam laws?
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I think that spam is usually some form of advertisement and many of them probably fall into the gray areas of the law. When it comes to physical mail there is limits and restrictions on what can be sent so I don't see any problem with restricting spam in the same way. Unfortunately spam is probably harder to control as spammers can just change email and ip addresses.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting case. I read more about it in an MSNBC article.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20748154/
The amount of spam this guy was sending and the money he was making is crazy - 10 million emails a day & grossing up to $750,000 a month. I think I side with the state on this one and not just because I hate spam. Jaynes's lawyer argued that the spam he was sending qualified as anonymous speech protected by the First Ammendment. However, the Virgina Court of Appeals said that the statute under which Jaynes was convicted, "does not prevent anonymous speech ... but prohibits trespassing on private computer networks through intentional misrepresentation, an activity that merits no First Amendment protection." I wholeheartedly agree.
Sabrina, good point about the grayness of advertisement being considered "speech." I was thinking that spam could fall under the wing of harrassment - you're receiving unsolicited messages with no way of telling the sender that you want to stop receiving them. Do you have the right to express your speech at people who don't want to hear your message? Don't we also have a right to not hear other people's speech?
ReplyDeleteI think the problem that the court had with Jaynes was that he was falsifying (hijacking) email addresses and using deceptive means to send large quantities of emails to others. Most libraries have provisions in their internet use policies which seek to prevent users from doing anything illegal wat the library. Jaynes's invasion of others email lists to find receipients for his spam emails would fit that criteria in my opinion. The State Solicitor aggreed by saying "There is no constitutional right to use the property of others to engage in speech."
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