http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-5553212.html
A federal appeals court has ruled that EarthLink was within its rights to disconnect a customer who it incorrectly believed to be spamming.
EarthLink pulled the plug on independent film producer Peter Hall's account in August 1997 after receiving a report from UUNet, its network provider, that Hall was sending out bulk junk e-mail. Realizing its mistake about a week later, EarthLink offered a public retraction and forwarded Hall about 16 e-mail messages that had accumulated in his account during that time.
It's unclear what happened next--each side accuses the other of being unwilling to reconnect the account--but EarthLink ended up accepting e-mail messages to Hall's account and quietly storing them in a mail spool rather than bouncing them as undeliverable. Hall sued EarthLink for $2 million in July 1998, charging that the initial disconnection was unlawful, and that the missed e-mail resulted in his low-budget film, "Delinquent," becoming a flop.
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