http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-5553212.html A federal appeals court has ruled that EarthLink was within its rights to disconnect a customer who it incorrectly believed to be spamming. EarthLink pulled the plug on independent film producer Peter Hall's account in August 1997 after receiving a report from UUNet, its network provider, that Hall was sending out bulk junk e-mail. Realizing its mistake about a week later, EarthLink offered a public retraction and forwarded Hall about 16 e-mail messages that had accumulated in his account during that time. It's unclear what happened next--each side accuses the other of being unwilling to reconnect the account--but EarthLink ended up accepting e-mail messages to Hall's account and quietly storing them in a mail spool rather than bouncing them as undeliverable. Hall sued EarthLink for $2 million in July 1998, charging that the initial disconnection was unlawful, and that the missed e-mail resulted in his low-budget film, "Delinquent," becoming a flop. [...remainder snipped...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Thu Jan 27 2005 - 20:55:28 PST