An online dating service does not have the right to blast unsolicited email at thousands of University of Texas email addresses, a federal appeals court ruled.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said on Tuesday the university did not run afoul of federal law or the US Constitution when blocking a torrent of spam from White Buffalo Ventures' LonghornSingles.com site.
The University of Texas may "implement the Regents' Rules without violating" spammers' rights, a three-judge panel unanimously concluded.
White Buffalo, an Austin, Texas, start-up that boasts of making "a ton of moolah" by promoting relationship-based Web sites, began its bulk email campaign in February 2003 by filling a freedom of information request that gave it nearly all the university's email addresses. Two months later, it began deluging the school's servers with commercial solicitations — and had its Internet addresses blocked after refusing to stop when asked.
Most spammers might halt their efforts at that point, but White Buffalo was unusually determined. It filed a lawsuit against the University of Texas and sought a court injunction protecting what amounted to a right to spam — citing both the federal Can-Spam Act and the First Amendment, which broadly limits a government university's ability to restrict free speech.
The case appears to be the first in which a court considered how the Can-Spam Act — which overrules most state laws dealing with junk email — regulates how a state university can install spam filters.
In its ruling this week, the 5th Circuit refused to overturn a trial judge's opinion siding with the university. It concluded that the Can-Spam Act was never intended to block an Internet service provider, even one that is part of a government-run university, from filtering out unwanted commercial solicitations. But the judges did suggest that the University of Texas could have taken narrower steps to filter email rather than blocking all correspondence from a range of Internet addresses.
Neither the University of Texas nor White Buffalo immediately responded to a request for comment Wednesday.
Talkback
January 9, 2006. Without comment, the United States Supreme Court declined an opportunity to address the constitutionality of the CAN-SPAM Act, which regulates commercial advertising on the Internet, and the University of Texas' policy of denying off-campus entities access to its email system for distribution of advertising content and solicitation even when the messages comply with the requirements of federal law.
In denying White Buffalo Ventures' petition for review, the nation's highest appellate court let stand a 2005 ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which upheld the University of Texas’ policy of blocking companies from delivering bulk commercial e-mail ("spam") to students and university employees through its e-mail servers.
The case only addressed the status of COMMERCIAL speech under the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment. See http:// www.faculty-rights-coalition.com/WhiteBuffaloCasenote.html
An issue that remains unresolved concerns the scope of permissible regulation of POLITICAL speech on public e-mail systems.
Speech on matters of public concern has traditionally enjoyed the most protection under the freedom of expression guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the supreme court.
Whether a state university's IT system constitutes the equivalent of a public forum for the free and unfettered exchange of information and ideas, has not yet been resolved. See http://www.faculty-rights-coalition.com/FRCvShahrokhi.html