This Hamidi case is going to have a lot of ramifications, I believe.
Court Rules Intel E-Mail Did Not Constitute Trespassing
http://www.haledorr.com/pdf/intel_hamidi.pdf
http://www.intelhamidi.com/victory.htm
http://www.newsobserver.com/24hour/technology/story/931360p-6492978c.html
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- In a ruling testing the bounds of free speech
in cyberspace, the state's highest court ruled Monday that a fired
Intel Corp. employee did not trespass on the company's e-mail
servers when he inundated its employees with electronic complaints.
In the 4-3 decision the California Supreme Court overturned a lower
court injunction that had barred Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi from
e-mailing workers at his former employer.
A lower court had considered Hamidi to be trespassing on the Santa
Clara-based chipmaker's servers, just as if somebody were squatting
on a piece of physical private property.
Ruling a defeat for Intel, a victory for free speech
By Dan Gillmor, Mercury News Technology Columnist
STILL PROTESTING: Chip maker Intel overreached when it sued a former
employee who was sending e-mail to his ex-colleagues to complain about the company's actions, the California Supreme Court said this week in a decision that may ultimately have important free-speech implications.
The court said Ken Hamidi wasn't legally ``trespassing'' on Intel's
computers by sending unsolicited e-mail because there was no harm to the company's systems. The ruling meant that Intel couldn't use inappropriate laws to keep out Hamidi's speech.
Predictably, Intel and its supporters are raising the specter of massive spamming as they denounce the ruling. But a look at the opinion, available on the state of California Web site (www.court
info.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S103781.PDF), shows that the four justices in the majority did grasp the issues and the consequences of their ruling.
Intel and other companies have no fewer legitimate tools to combat spam than they did last week. They do have fewer ways to prevent people from using their free-speech rights.
One of the most striking things about the opinions, pro and con, was the way the various justices reached for metaphors. Was Hamidi virtually holding a protest sign on the street, or was he breaking into the mailroom and delivering letters to 30,000 employees? Neither, actually -- but the majority wasn't persuaded that he was doing any real harm.
Although this was a state case, perhaps it might be helpful precedent
so day for overturning a horrible federal-court ruling from a couple of years ago. In that case, e-commerce powerhouse eBay was able to block a now-defunct company called Bidder's Edge from using software to look through the eBay site, among others, to let people know what items were being auctioned and where the best deals could be found. That case was an anti-customer travesty.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6206
http://www.eff.org/Spam_cybersquatting_abuse/Spam/Intel_v_Hamidi/
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/amicus/intel_v_hamidi.pdf
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10:30:33 PM 
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