Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Hydra Media Group, an email advertising service provider, was sued for violating the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act (CSPA) and the Electronic Mail Advertising Act (EMAA) by a plaintiff who received numerous unsolicited advertisement e-mails. Hydra’s motion for summary judgment was based on the following grounds: (1) it is exempt from Plaintiff’s CSPA claim under Ohio Statute (2) since Hydra never directly sent any emails to him, plaintiff’s EMAA claims fail, (3) EMAA is preempted by the CAN-SPAM Act. The court granted defendant Hydra’s motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Hydra qualified for the exemption and the Plaintiff’s EMAA claims over CAN-SPAM Act is insufficient, but declined to grant summary judgment on the claim that there was an issue of fact as to whether Hydra "caused" the transmission of the email since Hydra could have reasonably foreseen the transmission.

In yesterday's Wired News Circuit Court column "Free the Spam King" I take on the question of whether criminal prosecutions will stop spam, or are even fair. This one has engendered a lot of hate mail. It seems people really, really hate spam.