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Univ. of Texas Allowed to Block Spam

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

January 9, 2006, 6:14 PM

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it would not overturn a lower court ruling that allowed the University of Texas to block thousands of e-mails from an online dating service. According to court documents, the college blocked over 59,000 e-mails in 2003.

White Buffalo Ventures, which owns LonghornSingles.com, claimed UT's actions violated its constitutional rights to free speech under the First Amendment. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the CAN-SPAM act does not pre-empt the university's anti-spam policies.

According to Longhorn Singles, the company was following all anti-spam laws in its mailings, thus UT could not block the e-mails under federal law.

The service had also obtained the e-mails of university students legally, but UT claimed that the Longhorn Singles' e-mails were part of a larger spam problem that was causing the school's servers to crash.

The school then issued a cease and desist order to White Buffalo Ventures, which the company ignored. In turn, the university said it was forced to block the IP addresses of the company's e-mails. UT also said it had received several complaints from students and faculty over the volume of messages the company was sending.

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By spiked

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 11:10 AM

If the students who truly want to receive these emails can't figure out how to get a free Yahoo or Hotmail account, they deserve to flunk out.

Score: 0

By rearden

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 9:36 AM

The issue here isn't that the University of Texas has been *allowed* to block Spam. It's own right to maintain it's computer systems the way it wants has been upheld.

It is ridiculous to suggest that simply because a company follows CAN-SPAM (pointless political gesture that it is) its emails should be guaranteed to be delivered. Insane. It's Texas' computers, they can do with them as they please.

Score: 0

By tubaman

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 6:16 AM

I don't think you should receive emails from anyone unless you expressly gave them permission by giving them your email address yourself. Anything else should be called spam.

Score: 0

By ServerMechanic

posted Jan 9, 2006 - 11:25 PM

It's a joke how everyone these days thinks they have a right to everything.

Guess what, remeber that driving is a priviledge also and not a right!

Kids today seem to think the world owes them a living.

Score: 0

By Christopher10000

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 3:41 AM

The problem is, though, that some of the e-mails from the company might not be spam.
Frankly, if my ISP (and the University is taking the role of an ISP) told me that they were going to start blocking e-mails from a certain site and wouldn't let me opt-out, I would drop them immediately.
The University should put spam filtering on their server that blocks e-mails from this place, UNLESS the student or faculty member specifically said that they wanted the e-mails to go through by putting them on a whitelist.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 8:41 AM

Email never has been, nor ever will be a guaranteed form of message delivery.

If the University supplies the internet connectivity, they *are* the ISP and should take the same precautionary measures any sane ISP would take to block SPAM/Viruses.

And yes, I agree with the whitelisting (on a per account basis...I wouldn't want to get SPAM from a source some other idiot whitelisted).

They should, but by no means do they *have* to.

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

edited Jan 10, 2006 - 8:26 AM

No, the University should do exactly what it's doing... protecting its systems while establishing and enforcing policies that maintain that security and protection. If students want to receive personal emails of that nature, they can use a free, personal account from any of thousands of free email providers.

Obviously it varies from school to school, but many students try to claim that they pay for these services and "By God" they better have them delivered. The reality, however, is that many schools use tech fees to provide lab equipment and hardware... not network services. My college (of which I'm a student and an employee) uses tech fees in exactly that manner. Network access is given only as a courtesy because it's easier for us to provide access than not, and because we recognize the academic importance of the Internet. There has been many heated discussions lately as to whether "entertainment" is included in that access. Even so, we have procedures in place that require students to "Register" their computer with our office to verify that they have current, working antivirus, firewall, and anti-spyware protection operating as well as Automatic Windows Updates.

Score: 0

By athome

edited Jan 10, 2006 - 9:36 AM

You bring up some excellent points. Especially in that Internet access is a courtesy. I see nothing wrong in them blocking an IP that is or can be potentionally damaging to their servers. If a student has issues with using the schools servers, nothing stops them from getting an email account elsewhere to receive the information.

Additionally, I was at a conference just a while ago and the issue of laptop/moveable computers connecting to servers without updates and possible viruses also came up. With Windows Server 2003, you can now force these computer to update and scan before linking up with the servers. Though I have never done this, it is possible. Most of what I do is in home/small business networking. I cleanup the messes of Ichat/porn/gambling/p2p. Who says that people don't surf porn or gamble at work?

Though I believe in free speech, White Buffalo does have a right to have the internet site, but not the right to have it sent to my email address and I sure should have the right to block them from my server if so to choose. The university even tried working with them, plus the faculty and students were complaining about them spamming.

Score: 0

By AntiochMedia

posted Jan 9, 2006 - 9:29 PM

I agree too - I have enough to deal with from adultfriendfinder.com solicitation on my server - I blocked them as their e-mails were inappropriate and unnecessary. As long as UT Austin is willing to post this in their TOS, it's a great idea.

Score: 0

By Bugeyes

posted Jan 9, 2006 - 7:45 PM

Can't believe this even made it to court. The email is a priviledge bestowed upon the students by the University, not a right. The University can design any type of policy it wants, it's their email servers. Done deal.

Buggy

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 8:44 AM

Ahhh...sweet sanity. Always nice to find examples of it here on BetaNews.

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 8:17 AM

Exactly... network access, in general, at any college is a service provided as a courtesy to satisfy the academic needs of students... it's not an entertainment forum, and being managed by a department it is subject to the policies and regulations of the institution. End of story.

If you want to receive these emails, get a Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo/etc account.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

posted Jan 9, 2006 - 7:56 PM

I agree with you on this one.

Score: 0

By rijp

posted Jan 10, 2006 - 12:17 PM

Why then, since we all seem to be on the same page, do so many companies and university don't take this same policy? Maybe Betanews should be required reading for universities and professors, because evidently, they aren't getting it.

If we can take a snapshot of this forum, and forward it to CEO's and University Deans and President's, we may be able to actually encourage them to understand, this is the way things are and should be.

Its commendable that everyone in here, agrees this is just asinine and its a waste of the courts time.

I think this truly should be a discussion for Law professors and ethics professors, some very good points are made in here, and it should be brought to light.

Score: 0

By JacenSolo

posted Jan 9, 2006 - 9:19 PM

Same here./

Score: 0

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