FC: Alleged spammer claims California anti-spam law is unconstitutional

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 08:03:38 PST

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "FC: Bush's proposed budget boosts electronic surveillance, wiretapping"

    [Summary: After some guy in California got (allegedly) spammed, he sued the 
    (alleged) spammer for not including ADV: in the Subject: line as required 
    by state law. Alleged spammer got an adverse decision in court last month 
    and is appealing. Ira represents the (alleged) spammer and says the state 
    law violates the U.S. Constitution. He may even be right. What Ira filed is 
    here: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/calif.spam.appeal.020502.pdf --Declan]
    
    --
    
    From: "Ira P. Rothken" <iraat_private>
    To: <declanat_private>
    Subject: Petition for Review to CA Supreme Court in Ferguson v. 
    Friendfinders et al
    Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 07:41:51 -0800
    Organization: Rothken Law Firm
    
    Declan,
    
    Enclosed as a pdf is our Petition for Review to the California Supreme 
    Court in the "Bulk E-Mail" class action case known as Ferguson v. 
    Friendfinder et al  (incorrectly cited as Friendfinders). We are filing 
    this brief today - February 5, 2002. We won in the trial Court when the 
    Court declared that California's bulk e-mail statute was unconstitutional 
    as it violated the Dormant Commerce Clause of the United States 
    Constitution. In plain english, the trial court found that California 
    cannot legislate - on the State level - what must go in the single subject 
    line and body of a commercial e-mail - if each state were to do that it 
    would lead to conflicting laws and paralysis of such e-mail communication 
    as a whole. The California Court of Appeal recently reversed the trial 
    court decision. We are now appealing to the California Supreme Court. This 
    case is not about my clients favoring spam - quite the opposite. My clients 
    do not like spam and deny having sent spam in this case. This case is about 
    having one rule - on the Federal level - that governs spam so those who 
    want to abide by such a law have a chance to do so without having to 
    navigate 50 different State rules (to the extent they do not conflict).
    
    Thanks ;-)
    
    Ira P. Rothken
    Rothken Law Firm
    <http://www.techfirm.com>www.techfirm.com
    <mailto:iprat_private>iprat_private
    
    
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
    You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
    Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
    To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
    This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Feb 05 2002 - 09:08:14 PST