This came down a couple of months ago. I didn't see it mentioned elsewhere, and I
thought it's worth a mention.
The basic facts are that the Florida Family Association was
pushing the Hillsborough County School Board to retain certain religious (or as
they put it, spiritual) holidays. In
connection with this push, the Florida Family Council engaged in an email
advocacy campaign. FFA used an automated
program, which it made available to its some 8500 members, to send emails to
members of the Board. The Board, upon
receiving emails in large numbers, blocked the domain through which the emails
were transmitted (for some reason this domain name was "indiachildren.org"). FFA members received bounce backs for their
emails, and promptly filed suit. (Access a pdf version of the order granting summary judgment against the claims here [pdf].)
In many ways the case seemed fairly open and shut. There was no evidence that the Board blocked
the messages due to their content. In
fact, what triggered the blocking was the many messages sent during a short time period from the same domain
name - which is a fairly innocent reason to block the messages.
In addition to the as applied challenge, FFA also brought a
challenge to the generic policy in place with respect to blocking unsolicited
contact via "district sponsored telecommunications".
FFA argued that the policy placed too much
discretion in the hands of the Board.
The
court also rejected this argument.
(In
general, although not factually perfectly analogous, the court gave a quick hat tip to
Buffalo
Ventures, where the Fifth Circuit upheld UT's ability to block bulk messages
sent through its network.)
Both conclusions seemed fairly sound, and the more I think
about it, the more far-fetched FFA's arguments seem. The case seems to be on appeal - I'm not
exactly sure on what grounds . . . .
Memo to the Board (and other similar organizations): the court concludes that the Board's "network" is a
limited public form. Therefore, it may
be worth having a disclaimer saying that messages that are automatically
generated are not permitted - or maybe have a simple challenge/response setup
on any webpage which allows the public to freely provide public input.
[NB: for some odd reason, a lawyer for Wikimedia was one of the lawyers listed as counsel of record.]
FFA asked me to be an expert in this case, and I declined, having come to much the same conclusion you did. If someone is mailbombing you to the extent that your system can't do its normal functions, a reasonable person will take remedial action.
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