Trespass To Chattels in The Electronic Age
The antiquated common law tort of trespass to chattels has been invoked in the modern context of electronic communications to combat the proliferation of unsolicited bulk email, commonly known as spam. In addition, several companies have successfully used the tort to block certain people, usually competitors, from accessing their servers. Though courts initially endorsed a broad application of this legal theory in the electronic context, more recently other jurists have narrowed its scope. As trespass to chattels is extended further to computer networks, some fear that plaintiffs are using this cause of action to quash fair competition and to deter the exercise of free speech; consequently, critics call for the limitation of the tort to instances where the plaintiff can demonstrate actual damages.
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Famous quotes containing the words trespass, chattels, electronic and/or age:
“Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... with autumn falling over everything;
The plush leaves the chattels in barrels
Of an obscure family being evicted
Into the way it was, and is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“An age is the reversal of an age:
When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
It had not touched our lives.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)