Intel Spammer Wins Case
from the trespassing dept
The former Intel employee who (after losing his job) started spamming everyone at Intel with his complaints about the company has been told it's okay for him to spam. At lower levels, the courts had found that Ken Hamidi was guilty of "trespassing" on Intel's servers by sending the unwanted emails. However, the California Supreme Court says that it's not trespassing to spam someone unless there's "evidence of damages". Intel says they're trying to figure out what to do in case Hamidi starts spamming again. I agree that the "trespassing" claim was a bit of a stretch, but I don't see how Intel could be legally stopped from blocking the emails from Hamidi. As a company, they should be allowed to configure their email servers however they see fit. Also, with the rapid increase in spam legislation, there may be some way they can charge him with spamming, instead of trespassing - though, most spam laws have an out for anyone who has a "prior business relationship", which Hamidi clearly has with Intel.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
theft of company property...
Other than that, they should have simply blocked his IP address and left it at that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]