FC: Spammers threaten suit after contact info goes on Techdirt.org

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Of course spammers will claim the First Amendment protects *their* 
behavior, just not anyone else's... --Declan]

---

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 23:58:24 -0700
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Mike Masnick <mike () techdirt com>
Subject: threatened by "email marketers"

Hi Declan,

Not sure if this is interesting to Politech folks, but figured I'd pass it 
along.

Earlier this week, the NY Times ran a story saying that spam was getting 
worse, and they quoted a couple of "email marketers" in the article 
complaining that the anti-spam crowd were making it difficult for them to 
get their emails out.  I posted the story and my commentary at Techdirt.

NY Times article: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/22/technology/22SPAM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Techdirt's post: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030422/020233.shtml

We have open forums on Techdirt, and someone there decided to then post the 
contact information of the email marketing firm the NY Times spoke to in 
the article.  Assuming that it was their business information, which I 
assumed was public info that they wanted to get out, I left it there.

Today, I received a series of angry voice mail messages from one of the 
"email marketers" profiled in the NY Times article threatening me with 
lawsuits (he indicated that the Secretary of State of California would be 
filing the lawsuit against me). He appears to have 2 complaints that he 
mentioned in the voicemail.  First, that I did not properly understand the 
NY Times article.  I was not aware there was a law against misunderstanding 
newspaper articles.  Second, he was upset that his "private info" had been 
posted - and seemed to think I was responsible for it.  It is an open forum 
and I had nothing to do with the posting of information.  My guess, of 
course, at this point, is someone was trying to pull an Alan Ralsky on him 
(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20021206/010219.shtml).

Considering recent rulings that say there's nothing wrong with posting the 
contact info of a spammer 
(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030407/2340241.shtml) - which is a case 
where an anti-spam activist posted the info directly to his own website 
(something I did not do), I don't think there's a real legal basis on which 
a lawsuit could proceed.

However, after some consideration, we decided that *no one* deserves to be 
spammed if they feel they'd rather not be bothered - even if that person 
happens to do the same thing to others.  With that in mind, we decided to 
remove the information that had been posted to the site.

I've explained the reasoning here: 
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030424/2023243_F.shtml

Please note that we did not do this due to the threat of the lawsuit, which 
we believe is unlikely to actually occur, but because we thought it might 
set a good example: no one deserves to be spammed without their permission 
given.

Mike
Techdirt.com




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------