Comments on: Man facing draconian fines over fax wording deserves day in court

By: MattS

MattS — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 14:39:49 +0000

Hugo,

The text of the faxes is irrelevant, because if he had explicit authorization to send the faxes as claimed, that authorization would necessarily have to come from a source other than the fax messages themselves.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 02:13:26 +0000

Laws are tougher on fax spam than E-mail spam because fax spam imposes significant expenses on the recipient: costs of paper, depreciation of the fax machine, reduction of fax machine availability for desired traffic, and possible phone charges.

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 01:14:25 +0000

The Hobbs Act is said to forbid judicial review of FCC regulations, but if I understand the situation correctly, Walburg is not challenging an FCC regulation: he is challenging the FCC’s interpretation of a regulation, namely the applicability of the requirement of an opt-out procedure to unsolicited FAXes. Am I wrong? If not, why is the Hobbs Act relevant?

By: D

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 22:48:05 +0000

The Hobbs Act (1951) is about racketeering and extortion. It appears that there is a lesser known (to Google) act regarding the FCC and of their 3-letter-acronym friends. If these are related, please deconfuddle me.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 18:02:29 +0000

Matt–
The so-called “explicit authorization” might be hidden in some of that fine print that nobody reads. The text of the message, and a summary of the addressee’s complaint would clarify whether they had a legitimate beef.

By: MattS

MattS — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 16:32:28 +0000

Hugo,

If as claimed above, the recipients of the faxes explicitly authorized Mr. Walburg to send them faxes, then he isn’t a spammer. The content of the faxes are not relevant.

By: Hugo S. Cunnongham

Hugo S. Cunnongham — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 13:27:08 +0000

One or two paragraphs explaining what the defendant’s message said and why the plaintiffs objected would be helpful for the reader to decide whether the defendant is an honest Joe being abused on a technicality, or a sly spammer trying to get by on a technicality. The linked article does not contain this information either.