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Comment by Daniel_Newby | Hacker News Reader

That law is plainly unconstitutional. Besides which, anyone who trusts the privacy or authenticity of email is a fucking retard.

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What constitutional right is being violated here?

No right is being violated. It is a breach of duty: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press".

Even ignoring the first amendment, there is no enabling clause that grants the general power to regulate communication.

Are you saying that the CAN-SPAM act is abridging someone's freedom of speech? Whose?

You may have the right to speak but you don't have a right to force the populous to listen.

Communication is two way, spam is one-way.

The person sending the spam.

You have the right to expose people to communications with no Congressional control whatever. Congress shall make no law. You may shout on a street corner, you may set up a PA system until your neighbors are driven to madness, you may place pornography on a billboard, etc. Congress can do nothing to stop it.

>"You may shout on a street corner, you may set up a PA system until your neighbors are driven to madness, you may place pornography on a billboard, etc. Congress can do nothing to stop it." //

Are you trolling. You consider the constitutional right to free speech to encompass things like setting up a PA in public that is so loud it physically harms people?

It's not a right to amplified speech, nor "free shouting".

What speech or press is being abridged?

There is no abridgment of the freedom of speech, or the press.

Freedom of speech does NOT involve the freedom to send individually addressed messages to anyone. There is no freedom to spam.

Your freedom of speech does not entitle you to free usage of any privately owned electronic communications system. Your freedom of speech protects the content of your message, but does not guarantee you free postage.

Stop with the analogies. We are talking about elements of law, not elements of what-ought-to-be that might be studied by analogy. Congress is without power to regulate communication, end of dispute. Congress cannot stop spammers any more than they can stop me from casting messages into bricks and mailing them to someone who is paying a package forwarding service.

Regulating commercial speech is constitutional under the Commerce Clause.

CAN-SPAM doesn't apply to political or non-profit organizations.

Within its scope, the first amendment completely overrides the commerce clause. There is not the tiniest exception—that is the point of amending.

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