[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] on Thursday rejected [opinion, PDF] an appeal from an Internet domain owner seeking to recover $10 million in damages from an online marketer under the federal CAN-SPAN Act [text, PDF]. James Gordon had recruited his friends and relatives to collect thousands of unsolicited emails as evidence that Virtumundo, Inc., had violated the federal law limiting the activities of so-called "spammers." The US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website] granted summary judgment [order, PDF] to Virtumundo in May on the grounds that Gordon had not suffered "adverse effects" within the meaning of CAN-SPAM. The Ninth Circuit upheld the district court's decision, finding that Gordon was not an "Internet access service" (IAS) provider, and that therefore the limited right of private action in the the Act did not provide him with standing to sue. Writing for the court, Judge Richard Tallman said:

[O]ur review of the congressional record reveals a legitimate concern that the private right of action be circumscribed and confined to a narrow group of private plaintiffs. [T]his demonstrates to us that lawmakers were wary of the possibility, if not the likelihood, that the siren song of substantial statutory damages would entice opportunistic plaintiffs to join the fray, which would lead to undesirable results. While Congress did not intend that standing be limited to fee-for-service operations, we think it did intend to exclude plaintiffs who, despite certain identifying characteristics, did not provide the actual, bona fide service of a legitimate operation.