A New Jersey Superior Court judge has ordered America Online,
the leading ISP in the US, to disclose the identities of three its
subscribers who sent unsolicited e-mail messages to a US education
board last month from three different e-mail addresses urging
support for a local referendum. They sent around 60 identical
messages to nearly 2,000 teachers and board employees.
The Judge said that the education board has a right to be free
of “unsolicited bulk e-mail flooding its system" and that she
needed to know who the senders were so she could order them to stop
sending any further messages.
The e-mails urged support for a local referendum in elections
last week that would have replaced the local elected school board
with one appointed by the mayor. The e-mail campaign proved
ineffective and the referendum measure was defeated.
Under the judge’s order, the individuals were restricted to no
more than one message per day to any school board e-mail
address.
The case differs from previous cases, where “spammers” have had
their identities revealed under court order, because the
unsolicited e-mails in the present case were non-commercial, their
purpose being one of political lobbying.
