u235

It's hard to have any sympathy for email spammers, given the gymnastics we go though tuning our filters to prevent getting shit every time we open our mail client. Thus the news today that Maryland has ruled in the favor of the user and against the spammer is all the better received. To be precise, a court of special appeals has rejected an argument by a New York based spammer that he could not be held accountable for violating Maryland anti-spam laws. His argument was that he had no way to know where his emails might be opened, no way of telling that someone on Maryland might be on the receiving end of his crap.

Amusing as that seems, the Judge made the analogy to accountability of a criminal shooting blindly into a crowded room. If you shoot, you're responsible, even if you never had a specific target.

The best part of the ruling was that it overturned a previous ruling from a lower court that had been in favor of the spammers. The lower court had stated that the law was unconstitutional because it tried to regulate commerce between states. In my mind what that lower court failed to realize is that the internet has no borders. I fail to sense the difference in my data when it travels through the physical wires across state boundaries. The idea of applying the same standards to trucks carrying merchandise from California to Boston, on roads managed by the states, doesn't carry through with electrons in privately managed cables.

Back to the topic however, our spammer is deeply upset because he feels that people could now "make a living out of suing e-mail marketers". Really.

And the cherry? The spammer in question would like to fight the ruling but can't.... because his company is now out of business.