Parker v. C.N. Enterprises Press Release - 9/18/97

Austin, Texas, September 18, 1997: A Texas Court has entered a temporary injunction against a California resident and his company, prohibiting further spamming of the Internet without consent. Several Internet leaders in Austin filed the lawsuit earlier this year, claiming that Craig Nowak and his company, C.N. Enterprises, had illegally used the return address of an Austin business when he sent out a mass commercial solicitation by Internet electronic mail.

The lawsuit was filed by Tracy LaQuey Parker, a leading Internet author, who owned the rights to the domain name flowers.com used by Nowak and his company. Mr. Nowak's unsolicited mass mailing, known as a spam, offered for sale information on ``Free Cash Grants'' for $19.95. Mr. Nowak's spam used Ms. Parker's domain name in the electronic return address, which allowed Mr. Nowak to avoid receiving thousands of return-to-sender messages and the inevitable hate mail from recipients who despise the controversial practice of spam. Ms. Parker received thousands of such messages, preventing her from accessing her Internet account for hours and temporarily shutting down her Internet service provider's mail servers. In essence, the lawsuit claims, Mr. Nowak used Ms. Parker's mailbox as his personal trash bin.

Spamming is being criticized at all levels of the industry. Upon hearing of the lawsuit, Vint Cerf, Senior Vice President for MCI Telecommunications, also known as ``the father of the Internet,'' said,

``Spamming is the scourge of electronic mail and newsgroups on the Internet. It can seriously interfere with the operation of public services, to say nothing of the effect it may have on any individual's email system. Spammers are, in effect, taking resources away from users and service suppliers without compensation and without authorization. MCI was the first in the industry to publicly announce its policy against spamming and will be watching the decision in this case with great interest.''

The court order, entered last Wednesday, September 17, by Travis County District Judge Scott McCown, prohibits Nowak, his company, and those ``acting in concert'' with him, from using Ms. Parker's domain name in any electronic mailings, or from using any Internet domain name as a return address without the owner's permission. Judge McCown also ordered Mr. Nowak to respond to discovery requests served upon him, and set the case for trial on November 10, 1997.

Joining Ms. Parker in the lawsuit are her business partners, Peter Rauch, and her husband Patrick Parker, who also used the domain name. Also suing Nowak is Ms. Parker's Internet service provider at the time, Zilker Internet Park, which had to deal with the consequences of the flood of returned junk mail messages. They are joined by two Internet interest groups, the Texas
Internet Service Providers Association and EFF-Austin. Both groups fear the damage done to the Internet by mass mailings of the sort at issue in this lawsuit.

Ms. Parker said she was pleased with the court's ruling. ``Judge McCown seemed to quickly understand the harm that this type of irresponsible use of the Internet can cause people like me and small businesses like Zilker,'' she said. ``We hope that this ruling sends a message not just to the defendants but to everyone who is abusing the Internet this way.'' Pete Kennedy, the
lawyer who is representing Ms. Parker and the others, commented that ``While Internet service providers are trying to combat spam with technical means, there is also a need to set a clear legal precedent that people do not have the right to send Internet junk mail and use other people's e-mail accounts as their personal junkyard.''