In message <20010320192341.A26277@eiv.com>, Shawn McMahon writes:
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On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 06:47:31PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
=20
Especially those who've read the 1986 law requiring it. =20 Citation, please?
Title 18, Chapter 119, sections 2510 through 2522.
It forbids "interception" of electronic mail.
Interception is defined as "acquiring the contents", but it's defined broadly enough that if you get the message onto your hard drive and don't deliver it, obviously you weren't acquiring it for the purpose of delivering it, so you have intercepted it for reasons not related to providing the service, and thus have committed a felony for EACH email intercepted.
That's a preposterous interpretation. 18 USC 2511(2)(a)(i) says: It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an operator of a switchboard, or an officer, employee, or agent of a provider of wire or electronic communication service, whose facilities are used in the transmission of a wire or electronic communication, to intercept, disclose, or use that communication in the normal course of his employment while engaged in any activity which is a necessary incident to the rendition of his service or to the protection of the rights or property of the provider of that service, except that a provider of wire communication service to the public shall not utilize service observing or random monitoring except for mechanical or service quality control checks. See http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2511.html. In other words, reception of the mail is legal, since that's a necessary part of the service delivery, and given how much load spam places on ISPs rejecting it is permissible as protecting the property of the service provider. As for the last clause -- the law defines "provider of wire communication service" as (more or less) a phone company; ISPs are "electronic communication service" providers, and hence are not covered by that.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2001 at 07:23:18PM -0600, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
the service delivery, and given how much load spam places on ISPs rejecting it is permissible as protecting the property of the service provider.
Since I get less spam in a normal day than I do regular mail, and I get a lot more spam (and a lot more regular mail) than the average person, I wouldn't want to try to fight from that position in court. "But your honor, 5% of his email was spam, we had to kill that in order to provide the service." "But you were killing all his legitimate mail traffic from the 2nd-largest ISP in the country." "We had to, he got three spams from them last week." Rings kinda hollow. It gets worse if you killed what you thought was spam, and it was SOLICITED commercial email he signed up for. I get quite a bit of that.
That's a preposterous interpretation. 18 USC 2511(2)(a)(i) says:
It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for an operator of a switchboard, or an officer, employee, or agent of a provider of wire or electronic communication service, whose facilities are used in the transmission of a wire or electronic communication, to intercept, disclose, or use that communication in the normal course of his employment while engaged in any activity which is a necessary incident to the rendition of his service or to the protection of the rights or property of the provider of that service, except that a provider of wire communication service to the public shall not utilize service observing or random monitoring except for mechanical or service quality control checks.
You may have a very hard time convincing anyone that rejecting significant amounts of legitimate mail is necessary. Necessity is a requirement for exemption under this section. Note that service observing and random monitoring are permitted only for quality control checks. If headers are analyzed to slap up automatic filters when suspicious patterns are detected, it may be necessary to defend this practice as a "mechanical or service quality control check". This may be more difficult than you would expect. If automatic spam filtering is considered to be "service observing or random monitoring" than those who employ it may well face legal action under this section. Notice that the exception for protection of property doesn't apply to this category of interception. DS
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, David Schwartz wrote:
Note that service observing and random monitoring are permitted only for quality control checks. If headers are analyzed to slap up automatic filters when suspicious patterns are detected, it may be necessary to defend this practice as a "mechanical or service quality control check". This may be more difficult than you would expect.
Unless you put this control in the hands of the recipient -- let the end user decide what they want to filter. Poof. End of debate. -Dan
So 27 million AOL users (ie: my grandparents) should all be setting up their own mail filters ? That wouldn't be very pretty. Regards, Matt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Hollis" <goemon@anime.net> <snip>
Unless you put this control in the hands of the recipient -- let the end user decide what they want to filter. Poof. End of debate.
-Dan </snip>
participants (5)
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Dan Hollis -
David Schwartz -
Matt Levine -
Shawn McMahon -
Steven M. Bellovin