Re: A Chance Encounter with Brad Templeton, of ClariNet

[adam.philipp@ties.org (Adam Philipp)]

>> (For one thing, the ECPA protects the mail, and allows the machine
>> owner to adopt a "hands off" stance. For another, an "abused account"
>> can simply and quickly be killed, with new ones taking its place!
>> Think of the benefits.)
>>
>I'm not sure the ECPA provides the protection you want here.  I'll have 
>to look again, and do not assert this as certain, because I'm only 
>pulling of the top of my head what I remember from a quick scan of the 
>Steve Jackson Games opinion.
>
>Anyone want to repost it?  I recall it limited the ECPA in some 
>interesting way, and I remember being offened, and not surprised at the 
>narrow reading.

     The ECPA offers two levels of protection to e-mail, transmitted e-mail
and stored e-mail. The some mail on Illuminati (Steve Jackson's BBS) had
been sent but had not been read by the intended recipients. The the first
trial found that the there had been a violation of the ECPA with regard to
the section on stored mail, but not on transmitted mail. It narrowly defined
the transmitted section to include only interception contemporaneous with
transmission with the e-mail. Sine the mail had been sitting around on the
hard disk, the court refused to call it interception.

     If anyone really cannot find a copy of the ECPA I can go search for my
ASCII edition, but right now I only have a hard copy lying around somewhere
on this desk.

     Adam

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