Ninth Circuit Certifies Anti-Spam Law Question

(CN) - The 9th Circuit certified the following question to the California Supreme Court: Does sending spam e-mail from multiple domain names in order to bypass spam filters violate California's anti-spam law?

The anti-spam law prohibits "unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisements containing or accompanied by falsified, misrepresented, or forged header information."

Craig E. Kleffman filed a class action accusing Vonage of sending spam from 11 different domain names to avoid spam detection. The body of each e-mail contained an advertisement stating, "You Could Save up to 50% on Your Phone Bill!"

Kleffman said the domain names were intentionally random and garbled, making Internet service providers less likely to identify them as spam.

The lower court's answer to the certified question will help determine whether the anti-spam law applies to intentionally disguised spam.

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