A judge in Niagara County, New York has upheld a temporary
injunction issued in March that prevents PaeTec, an ISP, from
banning an alleged sender of unsolicited commercial e-mail,
so-called spam, from its network.
PaeTec argued that MonsterHut originally presented itself as a
fully consensual e-mail marketing service that sent targeted
e-mails to internet users who had previously agreed to receive
them. PaeTec also said that its contract entered into with
MonsterHut expressly prohibited spam. However, PaeTec claimed that
MonsterHut was sending spam to those who did not want to receive
it.
MonsterHut successfully argued that the restrictions on sending
spam only applied where over 2% of people who received MonsterHut
e-mail complained. This was despite PaeTec stating that this 2%
complaint threshold applies to all of MonsterHut’s legitimate
business activities and that MonsterHut was mis-representing the
terms of the contract.
