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Fwd: FC: Spammers threaten suit after contact info goes on Techdirt.org
Und hier dann gleich der zugehoerige Kommentar:
This is a forwarded message
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@politechbot.com
Date: Monday, April 28, 2003, 1:38:15 AM
Subject: FC: Spammers threaten suit after contact info goes on Techdirt.org
______________________________________________________________________
[Of course spammers will claim the First Amendment protects *their*
behavior, just not anyone else's... --Declan]
---
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 23:58:24 -0700
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
From: Mike Masnick <mike@techdirt.com>
Subject: threatened by "email marketers"
Hi Declan,
Not sure if this is interesting to Politech folks, but figured I'd pass it
along.
Earlier this week, the NY Times ran a story saying that spam was getting
worse, and they quoted a couple of "email marketers" in the article
complaining that the anti-spam crowd were making it difficult for them to
get their emails out. I posted the story and my commentary at Techdirt.
NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/22/technology/22SPAM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Techdirt's post: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030422/020233.shtml
We have open forums on Techdirt, and someone there decided to then post the
contact information of the email marketing firm the NY Times spoke to in
the article. Assuming that it was their business information, which I
assumed was public info that they wanted to get out, I left it there.
Today, I received a series of angry voice mail messages from one of the
"email marketers" profiled in the NY Times article threatening me with
lawsuits (he indicated that the Secretary of State of California would be
filing the lawsuit against me). He appears to have 2 complaints that he
mentioned in the voicemail. First, that I did not properly understand the
NY Times article. I was not aware there was a law against misunderstanding
newspaper articles. Second, he was upset that his "private info" had been
posted - and seemed to think I was responsible for it. It is an open forum
and I had nothing to do with the posting of information. My guess, of
course, at this point, is someone was trying to pull an Alan Ralsky on him
(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20021206/010219.shtml).
Considering recent rulings that say there's nothing wrong with posting the
contact info of a spammer
(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030407/2340241.shtml) - which is a case
where an anti-spam activist posted the info directly to his own website
(something I did not do), I don't think there's a real legal basis on which
a lawsuit could proceed.
However, after some consideration, we decided that *no one* deserves to be
spammed if they feel they'd rather not be bothered - even if that person
happens to do the same thing to others. With that in mind, we decided to
remove the information that had been posted to the site.
I've explained the reasoning here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030424/2023243_F.shtml
Please note that we did not do this due to the threat of the lawsuit, which
we believe is unlikely to actually occur, but because we thought it might
set a good example: no one deserves to be spammed without their permission
given.
Mike
Techdirt.com
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