Eric Goldman of Technology & Marketing Law Blog points to an article (actually, it’s a 10 page document, with endnotes), dealing with the thorny issues created by email blocklist services. “The article discusses an email marketer’s recourse for incorrectly being listed as a spammer on a spam blocklist, including defamation and intentional interference with prospective business relationship claims …”
Now let me tell you that I hate spam with an utter vengeance: it doesn’t matter how many personal filters I use, nor email addresses and even whole domains I change or completely discard, I still get far more spam than legitimate email and much of it is disgusting, even to my liberal European tastes, or full of harmful virus files or phishing lures.
Nevertheless, what I detest even more are faulty holier-than-thou spam blocks that seem (to me) to only prevent legitimate email from being delivered and, which seriously hamper my ability to communicate online. In my case, I am convinced, simply because my sending IP address is in Spain and thus considered guilty before being proven innocent by the mostly US based email block lists.
It doesn’t matter how much one says one is an “innocent victim” caught in these nets, it makes one look bad, either because people think you don’t answer their mail, or because they will assume you are blocked for good reason.
It has always been my assertion that being listed falsely is an illegal interference in someone else’s business. With all the usual disclaimers that “I am not a lawyer”, this was my logical conclusion, based upon the fact that I have studied the law of tort and parts of contract law in the UK, in pursuance of my former, real-world, offline career.
This expert, Jonathan Ezor at Touro College Law Center - Institute for Business, Law and Technology, seems to agree with this view and appears to offer hope of recourse (if you are in the United States anyway) via that route.
By no means, is it a simple cut and dried matter and, I am certain, it would be a bloody expensive process, but the principle appears to be on the right side. My prediction is that, eventually, this will place the responsibility firmly where it belongs and enable small businesses once again to be able to go about their business unhindered.
Busting Blocks: Appropriate Legal Remedies for Wrongful Inclusion in Spam Filters under U.S. Law
Via: Eric Goldman of Technology & Marketing Law Blog
(By the way, for a lawyer, this guy writes in lovely readable English, so if you’ve baulked at reading legalize documents on this sort of thing, give this a try. It’s refreshingly clear.)
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Sponzurz
