Silence of the Spam: Improving the CAN-SPAM Act by Including an Expanded Private Cause of Action

In the last decade, email spam has become more than just an annoyance for email users. Unsolicited messages now comprise more than 95 percent of all email sent worldwide. This costs US businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. The US Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the spam industry. Unfortunately, data show that spam only increased since the Act\u27s passage. Part of the reason for this failure is that the Act only authorizes the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and Internet Service Providers to bring action under its provisions. Each of these authorized entities either lacks the incentive or the resources to adequately enforce the Act, resulting in little to no reduction of spam. As a result, email recipients--not spammers--bear the cost of spam. This Note argues that the Act should incorporate an expanded private cause of action for email recipients, thereby increasing the enforcement level. This will deter spam prospectively by shifting the cost of unsolicited email from the recipient onto the sender

New WPI Parking Lot-Athletic Field: Deep and Shallow Foundation Design and Construction Planning

This project proposes a combined shallow and deep foundation design for the construction of a new integraded parking garage and athletic field structure for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). It mainly focuses on the foundations design of the building and on the construction planning and Project Management, using of the traditional schedule with the Critical Path Method. The project also develops a Building Information Modeling (BIM) digital 3D model and extends it to a 5D model for integration of time and cost

New WPI Parking Lot-Athletic Field: Deep and Shallow Foundation Design and Construction Planning

This project proposes a combine shallow and deep foundation design for the construction of a new integraded parking garage and athletic field structure for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). It mainly focuses on the foundations design of the building and on the construction planning and Project Management, using of the traditional schedule with the Critical Path Method. The project also develops a Building Information Modeling (BIM) digital 3D model and extends it to a 5D model for integration of time and cost

Assessing the state of forensic support to criminal investigations in Ghana: A case study in the Greater Accra Region

The study assessed the state of forensic support to criminal investigations by measuring public awareness, knowledge and perception of forensic science in Ghana. A simple random technique was employed to elicit information from 200 consented respondents in selected neighbourhoods in Accra through face to face interviews, questionnaire responses, and random phone calls. The study identified forensic science education as a key challenge among others in the forensic sector. The state of forensics support to criminal investigations in Ghana was rated on the scale of good (10.5%), bad (81.5%) and very bad (8%) indicating that forensic science in Ghana has “gone dark”. The study’s findings call for respective stakeholders and policymakers of Ghana to prioritize forensic support to criminal investigations to promote safety, security, and sustainable economic development

Buy My Vote: Online Reviews for Sale

The Internet has granted consumers access to a wealth of information to use in researching products and services. A substantial portion of this information consists of online consumer reviews, which hold great influence over consumers\u27 purchasing decisions due to their perceived honesty and independence from the company. The problem with relying on these reviews, however, is that real consumers may not be the authors; instead, companies often hire writers to fabricate reviews, known as opinion spam, which can either be positive for the hiring company or negative toward an innocent competitor. Because these fake reviews are difficult to detect, both consumers and competing businesses suffer harm. Parties looking to sue for this harm must overcome the writers\u27 First Amendment-protected anonymity, making it a challenge to bring private actions for defamation or complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Moreover, while the FTC has the authority to pursue its own claims against the writers and the hiring companies under its revised guidelines, it has failed to pursue many cases, in part because of the struggle to identify the perpetrators. And those groups with the most power to block such reviews from the Internet--the hosting websites--are immune from suit under the Federal Communications Decency Act (FCDA). This Note advocates for greater involvement by the FTC, urges Congress to amend the FCDA to eliminate website immunity, and encourages the websites to establish greater measures to bar suspicious reviews and gather more information to assist in identifying the purveyors of opinion spam

Wireless Spam This Way Comes: An Analysis of the Spread of Wireless Spam and the Present and Proposed Measures Taken to Stop It, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 229 (2003)

Spam in the form of unsolicited unwanted e-mail is already a recognized concern in the United States. However, a different type of spam, wireless spam, is starting to make its way to the United States. Wireless spam targets items cell phones with text messaging capabilities, pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs). These devices tend to be heavily relied on by their respective owners who bring these devices wherever they go, so to receive wireless spam represents a greater level of privacy intrusion. This article analyzes the various legislative measures that have been considered to regulate spam. It recognizes that most of these legislative measures do not take into account the inevitable arrival of wireless spam. Advocating a proactive stance, this article suggests an integrated bill that would incorporate the strongest parts of each legislative measure considered. The final bill the article recommends would carry heavy fines for violations, higher statutory amounts that states or individuals may recover as damages, and the scope of the bill would include wireless spam

Marketing Privacy: A Solution for the Blight of Telemarketing (and Spam and Junk Mail)

Unsolicited solicitations in the form of telemarketing calls, email spam and junk mail impose in aggregate a substantial negative externality on society. Telemarketers do not bear the full costs of their marketing because they do not compensate recipients for the hassle of, say, being interrupted during dinner. Current regulatory responses that give consumers the all-or-nothing option of registering on the Internet to block all unsolicited telemarketing calls are needlessly both over- and underinclusive. A better solution is to allow individual consumers to choose the price per minute they would like to receive as compensation for listening to telemarketing calls. Such a name your own price mechanism could be easily implemented technologically by crediting consumers\u27 phone bills (a method analogous to the current debits to bills from 1-900 calls). Compensated calling is also easily implemented within current don\u27t call statutes simply by giving don\u27t-call households the option to authorize intermediaries to connect calls that meet their particular manner or compensation prerequisites. Under this rule, consumers are presumptively made better off by a regime that gives them greater freedom. Telemarketing firms facing higher costs of communication are likely to better screen potential contacts. Consumers having the option of choosing an intermediate price will receive fewer calls, which will be better tailored to their interests, and will be compensated for those calls they do receive. Giving consumers the right to be compensated may also benefit some telemarketers. Once consumers are voluntarily opting to receive telemarketing calls (in return for tailored compensation), it becomes possible to deregulate the telemarketers—lifting current restrictions on the time (no night time calls) and manner (no recorded calls). And faced with increasing caller resistance, we imagine that survey groups, such as the Gallop Poll, might welcome the opportunity to compensate survey respondents so that they might be able to produce more representative samples