[11912] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Advertisements and lawsuits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bruce Gingery)
Sun Apr 24 16:37:06 1994
Date: Sun, 24 Apr 1994 12:18:32 -0600
From: lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu (Bruce Gingery)
To: jhall3@mason1.gmu.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Regarding the Green Card ad controversy, Paul Robinson <PAUL@tdr.com>writes...
...
>Let's look at it from another standpoint. Someone sends out the same
)message over a modem from his office in, say, Las Vegas. Centel of Nevada
>immediately disconnects his phone service, and his landlord gets a truck
>and removes his files and places them on the street. Does he not have
>cause of action to sue them? You might say yes, since while his message
>might be considered inappropriate, there was no legal grounds for the
>phone company to disconnect his service nor for his landlord to perform an
>immediate eviction.
Actually it's more like someone in Las Vegas sets a fax machine on
each line in the office to repeatedly dial every number in the city - in
rotation - attempting to transmit an advertising bulletin to each -
until it has dialed each number at least 10 times. After complaints
from thousands of customers about the nuisance calls, Centel of Nevada,
in a quick act cuts off all outgoing dial service from that office in
the simplest manner to abate the nuisance -- they cut the lines (at
the switch, of course, not physically)..
Some of the complaints were from customers who only received 10 or
more copies of the fax (on THEIR machine), and because it happened to
hit their voice lines (not appropriate for the traffic) while they
dealt, with the faxes, they didn't even notice those calls. Others
had loss of service on critical lines (though temporary) because of
the unwarranted intrusion of his calls. Still others who happened
to have an exceptionally heavy traffic day, ran out of fax paper
(or toner) in the middle of his unwanted and unwarranted faxes, and
actually lost incoming faxes that they WANTED because of his impact on
limited resources.
Bruce Gingery
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lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu
