Things to be covered Relevant facts regarding project Presenting group’s hypothesis Discuss significant research by group, and consensus of research and applicable law Application of research and appl

LEGAL ISSUES IN E-COMMERCE:

“Spam” is a term to refer to the act of flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

Email spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. Email spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.

One particularly nasty variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.

http://spam.abuse.net/overview/whatisspam.shtml

LFC is a web hosting organization claiming to be a full-service provider of mobile websites and/or social media network pages. LFC’s services include creating e-commerce sites for businesses interested in offering their product and/or service in an on-line market. LFC offers services such as creating websites intended to allow a business to promote its organization, sell its goods and/or services, conduct business transactions and connect and communicate with customers, clients and other businesses. LFC has offered their services to executives for new startup business called “Thin-At-Last” who hopes to market and sell its diet pill by taking advantage of e-commerce and a website that LFC proposes to build and host for “Thin-At-Last”. LFC told executives from “Thin-At-Last” “off the record” that LFC could generate millions more in business by using an alternative plan to get the product information into the hands of potential customers who would normally not actively seek out the site. The plan is as follows. LFC will hide “Thin-At-Last” true identity in spam messages that it will send to thousands and thousands of email recipients by using corporate and government email systems and spoofing third-party email addresses. The computers they will use will belong to companies such as Ford Motor Company and the Federal and State Court systems. Spam that is undeliverable will simply bounce back to the third-party’s email address.

Executives from “Thin-At-Last” come to you to ask about the legality of this method of conducting e-commerce.

Take a position and develop a hypothesis consistent with that position. Then prove or disprove the hypothesis using case law, statutory law, codified law and otherwise.