The Spam Wars: White Buffalo v. UT Austin & The Right to Block

Can a public institution block commercial email from reaching its servers, or does the First Amendment protect the right of private companies to flood your inbox? In the early 2000s, an online dating company called White Buffalo Ventures sent thousands of unsolicited bulk commercial emails to students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. When university network administrators deployed automated IP filters and blocked the company's mail servers, White Buffalo filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. They claimed that the university violated their First Amendment rights and that the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 preempted the university from blocking commercial speech. In this episode of reWandt, Professor Adam Scott Wandt examines the landmark Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision White Buffalo Ventures, LLC v. University of Texas at Austin (420 F.3d 366). We unpack how the court applied the Central Hudson commercial speech doctrine, why public universities have the legal rights of an Internet Access Provider under federal law, and how this decision protects your everyday digital sanity by empowering the modern spam filters and enterprise firewalls you rely on every hour. Explore more deep dives at https://reWandt.com #reWandt #CyberLaw #NetworkSecurity