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Legal precedents
for the future of the internet and the future of work? David vs Goliath in an ex-employee’s lawsuit
against Intel over right to block email.
Interesting read, too. Excerpts: Fighting
for the Right to Communicate
By Jill Andresky Fraser, NYT, Technology, July 13, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/technology/13CASE.html In its simplest terms, this is all about one man, one
company and six e-mail messages. Oh yes, and one lawsuit, which took nearly
five years to wind its way through the California court system. Yet the Intel Corporation v.
Hamidi never has been all that simple. It originated in a
battle against Intel, the giant semiconductor manufacturer, by Kourosh Kenneth
Hamidi, known as Ken, who has spent eight years trying to rally employees at
Intel, his former employer, to resist what he considers abusive workplace practices.
Mr. Hamidi, who was fired by Intel in 1995 for what it terms cause, sent six
e-mail messages after his departure to thousands of company employees,
prompting Intel to sue him for trespassing.
Over
the last few years, the case has assumed importance far beyond one man and one
company. A range of public interest activists, cyberlaw experts and labor
organizers believed that the suit's decision, if it favored Intel, would
restrict free speech and other activities that people now take for granted on
the Internet. Business leaders like the National Association of Manufacturers
sided with Intel, arguing that the company had the right to block the
electronic transmissions since they passed through Intel's private property. Two weeks ago, the
California Supreme Court overturned two lower court decisions and sided with
Mr. Hamidi rather than Intel, arguing that Intel could not properly use state
trespass laws to block Mr. Hamidi's e-mail messages since its property had not been damaged by them. Already, the ruling
has come to be viewed as a landmark decision affecting the future of the
Internet. Other states are likely to follow California's legal precedent,
according to lawyers, legal scholars and cyberspace rights advocates. The
decision is not expected to be appealed to the United States Supreme Court,
since "trespass" is a state issue. 2…(McSwain) said that he eventually came to believe
that Mr. Hamidi's case was the most important Internet dispute ever litigated. "If Intel could use trespass laws,
without demonstrating any damage to its equipment," he said, "then
this would have huge implications for all kinds of communications taking place
on the Internet." The
article that Mr. McSwain published in the May 1999 issue of The Harvard Law
Review validated Mr. Hamidi's case. "It is ironic," he wrote,
"that a technological giant such as Intel, which has helped to usher in
and has greatly benefited from the cyberspace age, now expects the state to
protect it from a creature of its making." 3…Despite broad support for the decision, there are those who believe this is a
dangerous legal decision, one that will open the floodgates to spam, erode
employers' powers and give unions free rein to woo members by e-mail. As part
of a longstanding policy, Intel would not allow the law firm that handled the
case, Morrison & Foerster, to comment on the decision. But in one of its
briefs for Intel, the firm wrote that the basic issue was property rights. "Ownership of private property
carries with it the right to prevent others from using this private property to
harm the owner," it said. The day-to-day
consequences are not yet clear. "I don't know if the downside from this
decision is small or large, but I do know this: There's no upside," said
Professor Epstein of the University of Chicago, who worked closely with the
firm while writing a brief for Semiconductor Industry Association and other
business groups. (end of excerpts) |
