FC: Toronto woman sues over her stored email, wants $110,000

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[A few points: (a) Seems to me this is, or at least should be, a 
straightfroward contractual dispute, not a sign of the impending 
apocalypse. If you want your ISP to handle email in a special way, shop 
around. If there's sufficient demand, ISPs will offer different options. 
(b) This illustrates why it's good to own your own domain name and use it 
for email. If you have a billing dispute, point your domain name to another 
ISP. (c) I suspect this is hardly unprecedented or raises novel issues. I'd 
wager that some commercial voicemail or mail-receiving services take a 
similar pay-overdue-bills-to-gain-access approach. (d) Let's be careful 
about using emotionally-laden terms like "hijacks." Perhaps it could be 
described better as "stores incoming email until customer pays up their 
overdue bill." --Declan]

---

Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 08:58:13 -0800
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v546)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Subject: ISP hijacks woman's email
From: Paul Schreiber <shrub () mac com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <46668F80-EE84-11D6-88CF-00039301A02E () mac com>

>  The Toronto-based freelance TV producer has been battling U.S.-based 
> Inter.net Group for the past 16 months over a billing dispute she says 
> may have cost her a lucrative job opportunity. Now she wants $110,000 in 
> damages over a policy that led Inter.net's Canadian subsidiary to keep 
> her ISP account open for incoming e-mail even while denying her access to 
> the account.
>
> Beyond the money, Carter said she wants to change the way ISPs handle 
> suspended and canceled e-mail accounts. At stake, she asserts, is an 
> industrywide practice that amounts to extortion, in which ISPs may hold 
> private communications hostage until bills are settled up.

Privacy commisioner's report:
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/cf-dc/cf-dc_020828_e.asp

From cryptonome:
http://cryptome.org/isp-hijack.htm

Slashdot thread:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/02/167234&mode=nested

CNet article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963631.html?tag=fd_lede2_hed


Paul

         shad 96c / uw cs 2001
       / mac activist / fumbler / eda / headliner / navy-souper
fan of / sophie b. / steve poltz / habs / bills / 49ers /

"To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral
 equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure
 the livelihood of monastic scribes."
 --Jon Ippolito, of the Guggenheim, on the CBDTPA




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