James Fuqua's Law Jokes

An Open Letter To All Spammers

Dear Spammer,

By now, with all the media coverage, you may have realized that many people are irritated by your activities. But if you thought it ended at mere irritation, you haven't thought it through.

Irritation is a form of stress, and as has been medically proven, stress kills. Ahah, you say, but your unsolicited commercial e-mail hasn't killed anyone yet. Perhaps it has...

Through an interesting legal doctrine, the spam itself doesn't have to kill, it just has to begin a chain of events that result in death. Say you were driving drunk and hit another car. The driver of that car is put in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital, but on the way to the hospital the ambulance is struck by lightning and explodes, killing the passenger. You could still be convicted of his death. Why? But for your illegal act of driving while intoxicated, that person would have most likely made it home safe. Your reckless and selfish actions resulted in that person having to be in that ambulance and thus you are responsible for their death.

Now let's look at your spam... it aggravates a man who then snaps at his wife over an insignificant thing. They get in a fight. He leaves the house, goes to a bar, has a few drinks... On his way home he gets into an accident, killing himself and the driver of the other car. But for your spam, he might have been in a better mood and wouldn't have fought with his wife, but no... your reckless and selfish actions resulted in the death of TWO people. You sick, shameless bastard!

Thus when you -- with full premeditation and knowledge of the potential consequences -- send out a bulk unsolicited commercial e-mailing to millions of people, you are in effect committing attempted murder by a single individual on a mass scale heretofore unknown in the history of the world.

Another interesting legal doctrine is that you may use as much force in the defense of the life of another from an attacker as you would to defend your own. That means that not just everyone with an e-mail address may kill you in self defense, but everyone in the world may kill you to defend the rest of us before your spamming has the chance to take another life.

Please, save your own life as well as the lives of countless others. Don't spam... or we'll kill you.

With love from your pal,

Greg Bulmash

This message has been brought to you by a guy who took one semester of Criminal Law at a junior college and is not meant to be taken as competent or even valid legal advice.

Greg Bulmash
greg@bulmash.com