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Judge Tosses AOL Spammer Lawsuit Over Jurisdiction Issue
from the jurisdiction-questions dept
Details are sketchy on this one, but it sounds like a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by AOL against some spammers because the judge claims not to have jurisdiction over the spammers. The spammers are in Florida, but AOL (and the court) are in Virginia. Once again, the question of jurisdiction online becomes important. Should the spammers be liable in Virginia because their emails hit AOL's machines (based in Virginia) or should it be filed in a Florida court?
Reader Comments
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The internet as its own space?
I really know nothing of law, but couldn't the internet be its own domain. Instead of using traditional courts why don't we setup a seperate court system to deal with it, and treat it as an entirely seperate entity. Maybe someone knows what I'm trying to say and could put it better.
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Re: The internet as its own space?
How does mail fraud work? If I'm in Florida and send you a snail mail to Virginia with a scam who prosecutes? I would say that the courts should start with mail fraud as a structure.
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Re: The internet as its own space?
mail fraud is a federal crime so it isn't dependent on state jurisdiction.
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Re: The internet as its own space?
However, spam is certainly not analogous to
mail fraud. Spam is mass-marketing, not fraud.
True, the goods/services offered are often
some sort of scam, but the defining characteristic
of spam is that it is mass-emailed indiscriminately.
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Re: The internet as its own space?
That's a great idea, but has much of the same problems.
1) Who gets to be the judges? The juries? Different people from different areas can have very different cultural biases that make determining law problematic on the net.
2) No matter what you do, there's always infrastructure, court cases will not likely be completely electronic...for something serious people will demand "live" attendence...where should this be? In the offender's base area? In the victim's? In a neutral area?
Don't get me wrong...I think its a great idea...but it has its own set of problems some of which are related to the problems faced now by courts all over the world.
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