on 5/27/2003 3:39 PM Dean Anderson wrote: > I read the ruling, too. The district court said that the government > failed to satisfy the tests for restriction of commercial speech, as > outlined in Central Hudson. The appeals court reversed. This is more waffling, and is useless. The constituionality of the law was upheld. Everything else is irrelevant. > However, this is an interesting case, since American Blast Fax was not > represented in the Appeal, and had apparently gone out of business. More waffling. Even if this mattered, the other defendant (fax.com) was still in business. Not that it matters, since the court specifically upheld the validity of the law. > In other words, cost plays a big part in the decision. But as has been > so roundly demonstrated, the cost associated with email is practically > non-existant, and does not ever cost any user more than $1 or $2 per > month, which they pay for email services. The cost of a fax to a typical organization with bulk purchasing power is probably on the order of $.02 per page, including the paper and ink used. Using thermal paper from a retailer averages out to about $.06 per page. It is very easy to demonstrate per-message costs in that same ballpark for spam, especially once we get measured-rate circuits involved. That you do not suffer from these burdens does not mean that nobody should be protected from them. As has been stated, the junk fax laws are not limited to cost protection, and also address the usability arguments. It has been successfully proven in this discussion that a sufficiently high volume of spam makes email less useful for its owner. You continue to exhibit an extraordinary willingness to argue your opinions against the facts. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/