FC: Alleged spammer claims California anti-spam law is unconstitutional

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

[Summary: After some guy in California got (allegedly) spammed, he sued the 
(alleged) spammer for not including ADV: in the Subject: line as required 
by state law. Alleged spammer got an adverse decision in court last month 
and is appealing. Ira represents the (alleged) spammer and says the state 
law violates the U.S. Constitution. He may even be right. What Ira filed is 
here: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/calif.spam.appeal.020502.pdf --Declan]

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From: "Ira P. Rothken" <ira@techfirm.com>
To: <declan@well.com>
Subject: Petition for Review to CA Supreme Court in Ferguson v. 
Friendfinders et al
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 07:41:51 -0800
Organization: Rothken Law Firm

Declan,

Enclosed as a pdf is our Petition for Review to the California Supreme 
Court in the "Bulk E-Mail" class action case known as Ferguson v. 
Friendfinder et al  (incorrectly cited as Friendfinders). We are filing 
this brief today - February 5, 2002. We won in the trial Court when the 
Court declared that California's bulk e-mail statute was unconstitutional 
as it violated the Dormant Commerce Clause of the United States 
Constitution. In plain english, the trial court found that California 
cannot legislate - on the State level - what must go in the single subject 
line and body of a commercial e-mail - if each state were to do that it 
would lead to conflicting laws and paralysis of such e-mail communication 
as a whole. The California Court of Appeal recently reversed the trial 
court decision. We are now appealing to the California Supreme Court. This 
case is not about my clients favoring spam - quite the opposite. My clients 
do not like spam and deny having sent spam in this case. This case is about 
having one rule - on the Federal level - that governs spam so those who 
want to abide by such a law have a chance to do so without having to 
navigate 50 different State rules (to the extent they do not conflict).

Thanks ;-)

Ira P. Rothken
Rothken Law Firm
<http://www.techfirm.com>www.techfirm.com
<mailto:ipr@techfirm.com>ipr@techfirm.com




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